Political | Process

The national average price for a gallon of gasoline on Monday sat at $4.07. The U.S. oil benchmark, West Texas Intermediate crude futures, was pushing $118, a big increase from the $90 it was at before the war broke out.

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• The Russian invasion of Ukraine has fueled concerns about global energy shortages given that Russia is one of the world’s largest producers of oil and that parts of Europe are reliant on its energy exports.

• While the United States and other Western countries have slapped sanctions on Moscow, there were energy carve-outs included to insulate the global economy.

• Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been calling for the U.S. and its allies to sanction Russia’s oil industry and cut off its ability to export crude. Some U.S. lawmakers have also been working on a bill to ban Russian oil imports to the U.S

• Despite the mounting pressure to act against Russia’s oil industry, President Joe Biden has so far resisted calls to act. He has not ruled out sanctioning the country’s energy sector, although he has insisted that “nothing is off the table.”

• The White House is threading the needle between trying to punish Russia and its leader Vladimir Putin for the incursion into Ukraine while also holding down energy prices so that U.S. consumers don’t see gas prices skyrocket more than they already have.

• “There isn’t a strategic interest in reducing global oil supply because that will increase the price of barrels of oil and increase gas prices,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Friday.

• “If you reduce supply in the global marketplace, you are going to raise gas prices, you’re going to raise the price of oil, and that is something the president is very mindful of.”

• “Anyone who’s calling for an end to the carve-out should be clear that that would raise prices,” she said the day before.

• Secretary of State Antony Blinken indicated on Sunday that U.S. and European countries are eyeing what a prospective ban on Russian oil would look like.