Look for a backlash by the public over rising gasoline prices as soon as this summer, when retail prices per gallon could hit $3.50 or $3.75. So says Dallas energy mogul T. Boone Pickens, who says improving economies around the world have led to increased demand for oil, spurring the higher gasoline prices.
With current gas prices having nearly doubled since late 2008, when they dropped dramatically after topping $4 a gallon, Pickens says he’s perplexed why the Obama administration has escaped much of an uproar over the issue so far. W’s administration, by contrast, was hammered mercilessly when prices (see chart) rose between 2004 and 2008.
Of course, the higher gas prices rise, the easier it might be for the billionaire’s Pickens Plan for U.S. energy independence to get through Congress. “We’ll get it done,” Pickens said of the energy plan in Dallas yesterday. “We have to. We’re the only country without one.”
