Biden sent Gasoline prices soaring long before Ukraine: Trump

Former US President Donald Trump has accused US President Joe Biden of causing a major spike in gasoline prices long before the Ukraine crisis began.

"What's happening is unthinkable," Trump told his supporters at the Saturday rally in Selma, North Carolina. "Remember energy independent? We had so much we would have been double the size of Russia and Saudi Arabia put together within one year."

Trump recalled that under his presidency, gasoline was at less than $2 per gallon in the US. Now, Americans are switching to smaller cars amid surging gas prices.

"Long before Ukraine, Biden sent gas prices soaring with the fringe left-wing energy policies inspired by the socialist joke known as the Green New Deal. Windmills. We want windmills all over the place, I don't see any windmills here... If you're near a windmill and you have a house, your house is like pretty much worthless, kills all the birds, ruins your landscapes, and is the most expensive form of energy there is," Trump said.

According to the former president, oil prices are at a record historic high now and the Biden administration plans to buy oil from Iran and Venezuela.

National fuel prices in the US have been surging for the past month amid the Russian special military operation in Ukraine and a cascade of sanctions imposed on Moscow that followed it.

Last week, the Biden administration announced that it will release a record of 1.0 million barrels per day of oil from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) over the next six months to alleviate a global supply crunch with a total of 180 million barrels to be added to the market to support the supply.