Gas Prices: Breaking Records and Bucking Trends

Having reached the lofty height of $3.19 per gallon, the national average price for gasoline has finally broken the record high hit in 1981, when a gallon of gas sold for $1.35 ($3.15 in today’s dollars). The public is upset, and politicians are scrambling to find ways to reduce the pain of high prices or, failing that, to appease their constituents by investigating, penalizing, or lambasting oil companies.

Rising gasoline prices are likely to result in another round of calls for oil company investigations, more calls to “reduce our dependency” on oil, more calls for hybrid vehicles, mass transit, and other perennial political favorites. But what Congress should do is look first to remove the price-inflating measures it has already put in place, and, dare we mention, increasing world supply (and reducing price pressures) by adding the massive oil reserves the US holds off shore and in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge into the world’s energy markets.

washingtonpost