two-part plan not only to ease the pain that families are feeling right now but to end this era of dependence and uncertainty and to lay a new foundation for true and lasting american energy independence. paraph pa parenthetically, just imagine if europe didn t have to rely on russian oil, if they were energy independent. it would change things so much. the problem we re facing with gas prices has two roots. first, the pandemic. when covid struck, demand for oil plummeted, so production slowed down worldwide. because of the strength and the speed of our recovery, demand for oil shot back up much faster than the supply. that s why the cost of gas began to rise last year. the second root is vladimir putin. the start of this year, gas was about $3.30 a gallon. today, it s about averaging