‘Do Not, Let Me Repeat: Do Not!’ Biden Warns Oil CEOs Not To Use Hurricane Ian as Excuse to Raise Gas Prices

President Joe Biden issued a vociferous warning to oil and gas executives that they should not use Hurricane Ian as an excuse to raise gasoline prices.

Gasoline prices have fallen sharply since hitting a high at the beginning of the summer, but the president sees a risk that companies might use disruptions in production as an “excuse” to raise those prices.

On Wednesday morning, Biden delivered remarks at the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, but led off his speech with some updates about preparations for the hurricane.

I want to add one more warning. That’s warning to the oil and gas industry executives. Do not, let me repeat: do not! Do not use this as an excuse to raise gasoline prices or gouge the American people.

The price of oil has stayed relatively low. It kept going down. The price of gas should be going down as well. My experts informed me that production of only about 190,000 barrels a day has been impacted by the storm thus far. That’s less than 2% of the United States daily production impacted for a very short period of time.

This small, temporary storm impact on oil production provides no excuse, no excuse for price increases at the pump. None. If the gas companies try to use this storm to raise prices at the pump, I will ask officials to look into whether price gouging is going on.

America is watching, the industry should do the right thing. As a matter of fact, it should move more quickly now to bring down the price at the pump because gasoline is down, the price of gasoline is down a great deal. There’s too much of a delay between the price and barrel of gas and oil and the price of gasoline at the pump.

Watch above via C-SPAN.