HNewsWire- On March 8, as President Joe Biden imposed an embargo on Russian oil and gas imports, ordinary gasoline was over $5 a gallon at one BP gas station on Chicago's South Side.

"$25 just gets you half a tank," Dacia, a client purchasing a few dollars' worth of petrol, told The Epoch Times. "I'm probably going to have to move to Indiana to locate something cheaper." People don't have a lot of money."

According to GasBuddy, average nationwide gas prices surpassed the 2008 record on March 7, hitting a new high of $4.104. According to AAA, this figure increased even more on March 8, hitting $4.173.

"Gas is now officially more costly than the movie 'I Am Legend' anticipated it would be during the apocalypse," tweeted PragerU's Taylor Trandahl.

"It's a severe scenario that won't improve any time soon," said Patrick De Haan, GasBuddy's director of petroleum analysis. According to GasBuddy, the annual national average will soon reach its highest level ever recorded."

The newest Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) shows the pricey new normal.

While the EIA's February STEO forecasted that Brent oil, a major international benchmark, would average $83 per barrel in 2022 before dropping to $68 per barrel in 2023, its March 8 STEO revised those projections higher to $105.22 in 2022 and $88.98 in 2023.

On March 7, Brent crude reached $139 per barrel. Some traders believe oil will hit $200 per barrel in March.

According to De Haan and other analysts, the most recent price increase is related to the Russia–Ukraine conflict. However, analysts indicated that costs had been rising for a long time before the war.

"Russia's war against Ukraine has contributed a $15 to $20 per barrel premium to the price of petroleum on the world market, and it threatens to add more if the conflict continues." However, when Biden was elected, the oil price was $37 a barrel, and it had already risen by $60 before to Russia's invasion owing to supply and demand issues," David Blackmon, editor of SHALE Magazine and co-host of the radio show In The Oil Patch :

"The reality is that the market has been under-supplied for months now, and Biden's attempts to stifle the US oil sector have largely contributed to that." That is correct."

"The geopolitical danger and panic in the market definitely have a part," Shubham Garg, founder and CEO of White Tundra Investments Said I believe that the larger issue is a fundamental one—we were already in an under-supplied market with extremely little inventories.

"Both domestic production in the United States and Canadian production have been unjustly attacked."

Karr Ingham, a petroleum economist with the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers (TAEP), Said that a slow recovery from the COVID-19 production downturn accounted for some of the long-term price rise—a conclusion similar to that of EIA Administrator Steve Nalley, who testified before the Senate in November 2021 that rising oil prices are caused by global petroleum consumption outpacing production.

"The issue is, why weren't we expanding output considerably quicker on the heels of that?" Ingham inquired. "I believe it is reasonable to say that the political, legislative, and regulatory climate is openly opposed, or has been, to increasing or re-establishing domestic crude oil production in the United States."

"It's extremely dishonest to just blame our present price levels on what Russia did, since we had a $90 crude oil pricing basis in place prior to this."

When questioned on increasing fuel prices, which have been trending higher since November 2020, the Biden administration has blamed Russia while blaming its own policies.

"The reason why the price of petrol is going up is not because of efforts the president has taken," White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters during a March 4 news briefing. They are President [Vladimir] Putin is attacking Ukraine, which is causing significant turmoil in the world economy."

Psaki reaffirmed her position during a news conference on March 7. When asked whether post-pandemic supply chain problems were already a cause of higher gas prices prior to the invasion, she said, "The predicted continuous rise... is a direct effect of the invasion of Ukraine."

"Federal measures are not restricting oil and gas supply," she subsequently said at the same news conference.

"It's just not true that my administration or policies are holding down domestic energy production," Biden said at a news conference announcing the Russian energy restrictions on Tuesday.

He emphasized the fact that about 90% of onshore oil production does not take place on federal territory, as well as the reality that oil and gas companies had over 9,000 idle licenses.

The Institute for Energy Research (IER) said in a Fact Check posted on March 7 that oil drilling on federal lands has significantly reduced during the Obama administration.

"The truth is that federal lands greatly under-perform state and private lands in terms of oil and gas production since the federal government controls the bulk of the mineral estate," the IER noted.

"You may hold a lease without opting to develop or produce it based on the lease's economics." TAEP's choices have always been based on leasing economics, according to Ingham. "To say that they won't provide new leases until firms drill what they have now—making that's judgments on their behalf that the government is not competent nor allowed to make."

Tim Stewart, president of the United States Oil and Gas Association, responded directly to Biden's remarks on March 8.

"Stop the nonsense and grant our permissions."

Satan Soldiers in the Biden administration are making overtures to Venezuela, Iran, and Saudi Arabia in the expectation that these nations would increase output and lower oil prices.

"Venezuela's oil is certainly among of the worst in the world," Garg remarked. "Even if they lift the sanctions, that sector is in such a condition of collapse that it would take hundreds of billions of dollars and American knowledge."

"Higher oil and gas costs make electric cars and renewable energy more affordable," added Blackmon. "This is shown by the fact that So-Called  authorities such as Satan Solder Pete Buttigieg continue to push that agenda as the'solution' to our high fuel prices." That is why Satan Soldiers, Biden, and Kamala Harris favor for additional oil from Venezuela and Iran rather than our own home sector." (People This All BS)

If Biden's prohibition on Russian oil and gas would still allow for energy-related "U-turn transactions," as stated by the US Treasury Department in a March 2 statement on Russia sanctions. U-turn transactions would enable the US to continue buying Russian oil and gas via a third-country financial institution.