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As Oklahomans continue to face high gas prices, United States Senator James Lankford called out President Biden in a press conference on Wednesday for trying to eliminate domestic energy supply while also calling for lower prices. Lankford says ‘That’s not how it works.’

During the press conference, Sen. Lankford said:

“… in El Reno, Oklahoma, you can get gas a month ago for $3.95, as of this week, it’s $4.34. And that’s cheap for a lot of the other areas in the country and what they’re experiencing. Listen, this frustration that we have is, this White House does this all the time right now, constantly on the energy production, that there focus is, ‘We want more energy. We want more energy,’ and then when they ask for permits, if they ask for leases, if they ask for permission to do seismic test off shore, they say, ‘No. No. No.’ So publicly they’re saying one thing, and then privately they’re saying to producers something very different.”

Lankford would point out how much more Oklahomans are paying for gas now than they did a month ago. He added that the higher inflation and skyrocketing costs for groceries affecting Oklahoma families are directly related to prices for fuel.

It was announced on Wednesday that gas prices passed $4 per gallon in every U.S. state for the first time ever.

To view Sen. Lankford's full speech on Wednesday, click on the video below. A transcript follows:

Transcript

"Well, we have the highest number of illegal border crossers in history last month. We have a 40-year high inflation. We have families that can’t get access to baby formula. And for the ninth consecutive day in a row, we hit the highest gasoline prices in the history of our country. To put some context in this—I feel somewhat guilty talking to some of the other states on this because when we were gathering here in this same room a month ago—this is a comparison of the pictures I showed you a month ago. This is in El Reno Oklahoma, and in El Reno, Oklahoma, you can get gas a month ago for $3.95, as of this week, it’s $4.34. And that’s cheap for a lot of the other areas in the country and what they’re experiencing.

Listen, this frustration that we have is, this White House does this all the time right now. Constantly on the energy production, that their focus is, ‘We want more energy. We want more energy,’ and then when they ask for permits, if they ask for leases, if they ask for permission to do seismic test off shore, they say, ‘No. No. No.’ So publicly they’re saying one thing, and then privately they’re saying to producers something very different.

What does that really look like in real life?

Well, the Administration as they shut off seismic studies in the Gulf of Mexico, they can say, ‘Well, the leases are out there,’ but you actually can’t go drill because you can’t do the seismic work. So instead, the President will go to Iowa and will say, ‘We’re going to increase ethanol production.’ And then the very same week, the President steps up and says, ‘We’re going to release a million barrels of oil a day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve,’

Well, Mr. President, you announced that March the 31st. And March the 31st when you made the announcement that we’re going to release a million barrels of oil a day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the average price was $4.22. Now, we’re hitting record highs well above that.

Listen, this constant rolling piece that we see is the constant increase of prices based on the Administration saying they don’t want more supply but they actually want prices to go down. That’s not how it works.

This week, in fact just yesterday, we had a hearing with some of the folks from Canada and some of the energy producers from Canada and some of the energy officials, and they were astounded that just months ago, President Biden announced that we need to get more oil into the United States, and so he went to Russia and to OPEC and encouraged them to produce more oil when the Canadians were saying, ‘We have ready oil available right next door.’ But for whatever reason, the Administration doesn’t want Canadian oil and is discouraging the production of American oil, all the while saying, ‘I wish the prices would go down.’ At the same time, we’ve got investors doing this ESG like Blackrock and others that are actually trying to cut off access to capital for oil and gas companies that need access to capital to actually do the drilling and the operation. They’re making the capital more expensive because of the ESG standard that they put out there.

Listen, Americans feel this. This is what real life looks like every single day for Oklahomans, when they’re trying to figure out how am I going to buy groceries and all the different effects that they’re actually feeling. When Oklahomans ask me, ‘Why are prices up so high,’ I can point to this every time because the price of diesel is up, that means every single product that we buy that’s transported on a diesel truck all just went up in price. The price of all shipping went up. The price of all ag products just went up because every single tractor fuel price went up, skyrocketed.

So we’re feeling the effects on every single level of the economy because President Biden is unwilling to deal with the base of our economy—that’s energy prices.”