President Biden talked about Chevron, a possible gas tax holiday and more

President Biden remarked on Chevron’s hurt feelings, a possible gas tax holiday and his $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. The remarks took place on June 21 at the White House.

Video Transcript

JOE BIDEN: Yes.

- Quick question on the Chevron CEO's complaint today. He said that your administration has largely criticized the oil and gas industry and at times is vilified it and that the administration would need to take a change in approach in order to make progress on reducing energy prices and to increase supply. Do you have a reaction to that, sir?

JOE BIDEN: He's mildly sensitive. I didn't know they'd get their feelings hurt that quickly. Look, we need more refining capacity. This idea that they don't have oil to drill and to bring up is simply not true. This piece of the Republicans talking about Biden shut down fields-- wrong. 9,000 of them, OK. And then we ought to be able to work something out whereby they're able to increase refining capacity and still not give up on transitioning to renewable energy. They're both within the realm of possibility.

- If you were to decide to go for a federal gas tax holiday, do you believe Congress would support that? And how would you feel about the fact that those funds are used for something that is a big priority for you, the repair of roads and infrastructure and all of that?

JOE BIDEN: We have a infrastructure bill we passed. Giant. 1.2-- $1 trillion $200 billion.

- So you think it would be worth it for you to--

JOE BIDEN: It's not like before. Look, it will have some impact. But it's not going to have impact on major road construction and major repairs.

- Sounds like you may have made a decision.

JOE BIDEN: Well, let me put this way. I'm in the process. I'll have a decision before the week is out. But you asked me an explicit question about whether or not how would I feel? Is it going to, in fact, make it difficult to maintain our roads? The answer is we have plenty of capacity to do that.