North Fulton Today

Despite President Biden's March 31 confirmation of the release of up to 180 million barrels of crude oil from the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve gas prices remain higher than they've been in decades nearly two months later. 

The national average is up 20 cents from the day of the announcement and in Georgia, the state average of $3.94 per gallon is up almost 20 cents since the previous week. At the same time, domestic oil production is being limited by the Biden administration.

“There’s little, if any, good news about fuel prices heading into summer, and the problem could become worse should we see an above average hurricane season, which could knock out refinery capacity at a time we badly need it as refined product inventories continue to plummet" Patrick De Haan, the Head of Petroleum Analysis at Gas Buddy, said. 

President Biden himself is unsure of when prices will come back down.

 "It could come down fairly significantly," President Biden said. "It could come down [to] a better part of anything from 10 cents to 35 cents a gallon, it’s unknown at this point.”

Despite this, administration officials claim gas production is increasing.

“Production is essentially higher than it’s been in a couple decades,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said during a congressional hearing two weeks ago. “On the federal lands, we’re doing what we need to do and we’re following the law and making sure that we are moving those issues forward.”

Georgia continues to be hit hard. Specifically, gas prices in Fulton County are above $4 a gallon as of now. National gas prices are up 7.8% from where they were a month ago.

As a recent GasBuddy press release drew attention to, national fuel prices went back down slightly after sharply increasing in March, as tensions between Russia and Ukraine went on, but are now back on the upswing. As of the last week, the national average climbed by greater than 15 cents per gallon. Energy Information Administration (EIA) data demonstrates that total oil production in the U.S. has been on the decline for three consecutive months, going against assertions from administration officials' that domestic production is at historic highs.

President Biden issued an executive order halting all new oil and gas leasing on federal lands, briefly after taking office last January. He has since canceled a number of oil leases. According to a May 11th report from The Hill, the Administration has now canceled oil and gas lease sales in Alaska's Cook Inlet and the Gulf of Mexico. 

The lease in Alaska would have covered more than 1 million acres, The Hill reports.