continued from page gia is ….

continued from page

gia is $3.18 per gallon, about 40 cents less than last month.

The current suspension of the motor fuels tax is the second Kemp has ordered. He first suspended the tax in March of last year, shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and subsequent sanctions on Russia drove gasoline prices in Georgia to a record high of more than $4 a gallon. The first suspension remained in effect until last January.

With a budget surplus that had reached an estimated $4.8 billion at the end of the last fiscal year in June, the state can afford to keep the suspension in place.

Republicans have criticized President Joe Biden for canceling oil and gas leases on hundreds of thousands of acres in Alaska’s environmentally fragile Arctic National Wildlife Refuge at a time when pump prices are well above where they were when he took office in 2021.

Biden authorized large withdrawals from the national Strategic Oil Reserve earlier this year in an effort to tamp down rising gasoline prices. But with the reserve at its lowest level in a decade, he isn’t expected to reduce the stockpile further.