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(Reuters) – U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said he would talk to U.S. refiners on Monday about ways to boost fuel production in an effort to lower gasoline prices that remain stubbornly high in the wake of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.
U.S. refiners are already running at high rates as strong fuel prices have lifted margins.
“The United States refineries are running at record high, but we have refineries in the Middle East that are turned down,” Wright told reporters. “So I’ll be talking later today with a number of American refiners about what we can do in the government to help them further ramp up their throughput.”
Speaking at an Exxon Mobil oil rig site in Midland, Texas, Wright said increasing refinery output in the U.S. and elsewhere was the key to lowering gasoline prices.
High pump prices are a political risk for President Donald Trump ahead of November’s midterm elections, when his fellow Republicans will try to retain control of both chambers of Congress.
The average U.S. price for regular gasoline is more than $4.06 a gallon, according to motorist group AAA, up by more than $1 from a year ago.
Trump told a political rally in New York on Friday that paying “a tiny little bit more for your gasoline” was worth it to ensure “a very evil country” could not obtain a nuclear weapon, one of the reasons he has cited for the war.
Wright said Trump was asking Americans to “bear with him” because the world cannot afford Iran having a nuclear weapon.
Reporting by Sheila Dang in Midland and Timothy Gardner. Editing by Mark Potter
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