Detroit City Wire

It has been two months since President Joe Biden announced he would release 180 million barrels of crude oil from the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but Americans have yet to see lower gas prices.

Biden made the announcement in March to curb rising gas prices within several weeks. He further claimed, "it could come down fairly significantly. It could come down [to] a better part of anything from 10 cents to 35 cents a gallon, it’s unknown at this point.”

AAA reported that Americans are typically paying $4.42 per gallon with Michigan averaging $4.35 per gallon and gas was 20 cents cheaper when Biden announced that he was tapping into the reserve.

In metropolitan areas like Detroit and the Upper Peninsula, motorists are paying roughly $4.41 to $4.52 per gallon on average, ClickonDetroit reported.  

As of May 12, the national gas price average is $4.42 per gallon, a 7.8% climb from a month ago when the average was $4.10 per gallon. On March 31, the day of the SPR release, gas was $4.22 per gallon, 20 cents cheaper than today.

While the country’s fuel prices did drop after surging in March, GasBuddy reported that they are on the rise again as the average price for a gallon of gas has gone up 15 cents in the past week.

“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,” said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy.

De Haan added that demand is outpacing the supply of fuel, which he termed “liquid gold,” and with Russia’s oil off the market has accelerated the limited supply of oil.

The country’s oil production has declined for the past three months, according to data collected from the Energy Information Administration.

“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.”

The Hill reported that Biden began halting oil and gas leasing on federal lands once he took office in January of 2021. His most recent cancellations were for planned oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska's Cook Inlet. The lease in Alaska would have covered more than 1 million acres, The Hill reports.