Analysts of the gasoline industry predicting prices will be $4 a gallon by Memorial Day and possibly $5 in some parts of the country by July 4.
If gasoline prices rise as high as expected, it could put more than a crimp in the economic optimism that we are recovering from the recession that started before Barrack Obama became president. Higher fuel prices mean higher prices for everything else and could bring the recovery crashing to a halt.
While Obama cannot be blamed for the political upheavals causing the current spike in prices - the unrest in the Middle East, Iran's decision not to sell crude oil to European countries, forcing them to seek other suppliers and fears the Israelis will launch pre-emptive strikes against Iran's nuclear programs.
He can be blamed for the short-sightedness of his energy policy.
Obama came into office in 2008 determined to wrestle Americans away from a dependency on traditional fossil fuels - petroleum, natural gas and coal. This is a laudable goal but one that cannot be accomplished overnight as environmentalists demand.
To Obama's credit, wind, solar and alternative energy sources are being used more today than at any time in the past. However, he has continued to neglect, even prevent, an increase in traditional energy production that will be needed to see us through the transition period.
It has been pointed out many times how Obama uses the Environmental Protection Agency in a war on coal and what this war has done to residents of the Appalachian coal-producing region, through job losses and higher energy costs.
And his war on the domestic production of oil has been nearly as relentless. He has thrown up roadblacks to domestic production at every turn and his decision in January not to allow the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline was based on political motivations.
Besides creating thousands of jobs, the pipeline would have moved billions of barrels of oil from one of the world's richest fields in Alberta, Canada, to refineries in Texas. Obama cut off a potential source of fuel that would lessen our dependence on oil from unfriendly nations and help us through the transition period to other sources of fuel.
Yes, we should continue to fund alternative energy programs and look for ways to better use our already abundant sources of fuel. Yes, we should still encourage auto manufacturers to build more efficient vehicles.
But we will never be free of the need for gasoline and coal. This is a fact and one the Obama administration must accept.
