Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton expects gas prices to further go up in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine even as he calls for greater investment and deregulation of energy production in the United States.

“Well, unfortunately, prices at the pump probably are going to go up. But remember, they were going up for the first year of the Biden administration, long before this moment. That inflation is a direct result of the hostility that the Biden administration has towards oil and gas, which still powers our economy as much as they might not like that,” Cotton said in an interview with “America Reports” hosts John Roberts and Sandra Smith on Fox News.

“The left is taking us down the path of Germany, which built all of those pipelines to Russia, which closed down all of its nuclear power plants, and now they are beholden to a hostile foreign power. That’s the last place America should ever be, especially since we don’t have to be there, since we are blessed with so much oil and gas in this country to use for our own safety and our own prosperity.” (Related: Gas prices soar as demand climbs following easing of pandemic restrictions.)

Biden administration creating conditions for high gas prices

Last November, Cotton claimed that the Biden administration was creating the conditions for high gas prices to force Americans into using green energy technology such as electric cars.

Cotton said in an interview with Breitbart that “it was not unintended or some accident” that gas prices are rising across the country. Since his first day in office, Biden has taken steps to cram down on future oil and gas production in the U.S. by restraining lease sales and closing down pipeline projects.

“Most notably, more and more people tell me that they’re not even able to fill their pickup truck tank up for the entire week. They’ve got to fill up half a tank and hope that the price comes down by the end of the week. That, in particular, is the intended effect of Joe Biden’s energy policy. It’s not unintended or some accident. They want gas to cost $4 a gallon because they want all of us to get out of pickup trucks and SUVs and get into small electric compacts or bicycles or scooters or whatever else Pete Buttigieg takes to work,” Cotton stated.

According to Cotton, high fuel prices and the soaring rates of inflation are hitting Americans’ pocketbooks hard.

“You cannot print trillions of dollars in money on the one hand and also pay people not to work and not to produce the stuff that we need to buy and on the other hand not expect the price to increase as fast as it has in 30 years. At this rate, people are losing a penny on every dollar of their savings every month. So in three months, if you had $100 in your savings account, it’ll be worth only $97 in just three months. That is going to continue to worsen as long as the Democrats pursue their reckless inflationary policies,” Cotton said.

Cutting down carbon emissions has been a central part of the Biden administration’s energy policy. He has discarded oil infrastructure projects like the Keystone Pipeline that would have brought crude oil from Canada to refineries in the United States. Biden has also delayed possible oil lease sales in the 1002 area oil reserve of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

In January last year, Biden pushed the U.S. to rejoin the Paris Climate Accords, a non-binding set of international climate goals. Former President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the accords in 2020, suggesting an unfair task the accords put on Americans over other nations.