Gasoline continues fueling politics

(Jorgosphotos / Flickr)

WASHINGTON — Record gasoline prices for February — including a dime-a-gallon increase this week — continue to fuel a high-octane election-year fight for political position and an inside track in the ongoing debate over energy policy.

A gallon of regular averaged $3.65 nationwide Friday, AAA reported, up from $3.53 a week earlier.            Oil interests see that as a chance to push harder for more domestic energy development.

And Republicans have quickly taken it up as an issue to use against President Barack Obama, though most analysts say presidents have virtually no control over rising costs at the pump.

“This debate is a debate we want to have,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told a closed-door GOP meeting. “Certainly this summer will see the highest gas prices in years.”

Obama’s plan

Obama argued Thursday that no short-term fixes exist but that his “all-of-the-above” energy strategy, outlined in his State of the Union address, stands the best chance in the long haul of insulating the U.S. from gasoline-price spikes.

“That’s the only real solution to this challenge,” Obama said.

On the gasoline production and conservation side, he touted plans to make available 75 percent of the nation’s  potentially recoverable offshore oil and gas resources in the Gulf of Mexico and Arctic Ocean and rules doubling passenger car mileage standards by model-year 2025.

As to renewables, he cited the administration’s goal of approving construction of 10 gigawatts of wind and other renewable energy projects this year.

Obama has noted that U.S. oil-and-gas output has risen under his watch, that net imports have fallen and that his administration already has leased millions of acres for drilling.

GOP response

Industry leaders and their GOP allies have responded that the rising production stems from state and private lands that the federal government largely doesn’t control, and that Obama’s policies have hurt development of federal lands and waters.

American Petroleum Institute President Jack Gerard complained that the administration hasn’t opened waters outside the Gulf and Arctic to drilling; has imposed offshore regulations that raise costs and slow permit approvals; delayed approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline that would carry Canadian tar sands crude to refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas; and proposes “discriminatory” elimination of some oil industry tax breaks.

House Republicans approved a bill this month that would allow drilling in parts of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and would approve Keystone XL. Environmentalists and Democratic allies say the measure — which is unlikely to pass the Democrat-controlled Senate — would be environmentally destructive.

Amy Myers Jaffe, fellow with Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, said polling shows gasoline prices heavily sway public sentiment.

That may explain why politicians on both sides are again using them as further fodder. But political experts are not certain how the posturing on price will play out.

“Unless the economy really turns south, I don’t think it’s going to make too big an impact,” said Thomas Whalen, a professor at Boston University. “But it can’t help President Obama,”

Average price Friday for a gallon of regular:

– U.S.: $3.65
– Texas: $3.53
– Houston: $3.51