Romney slams Obama over gas prices

Mitt Romney blamed President Obama's policies for sending gas prices through the roof during a Fox News appearance Thursday morning.

"People who set the prices of oil look not just at the daily spot rate, they look long-term to see what's going to be happening," Romney said. "They buy and sell these shares and futures of oil based upon what they think is going to happen. What they're seeing with this president is a series of policies that say oil, natural gas, coal are not going to be used as effectively in this country as they could be."

Republicans have increasingly focused on gas prices as other economic indicators have improved, and polls show that the public blames Obama for the high prices at the pump. Romney is the latest Republican presidential candidate to drill Obama on the issue — rival Newt Gingrich has been campaigning on a "$2.50 per gallon plan" that promised to lower prices.

Romney admitted that U.S. energy policies are not the only thing that affect gas prices, but he said a more aggressive energy development strategy would eventually tamp down costs.

"No one can guarantee what the price of oil is going to be, but what we can do is take advantage of what we know we have which is abundant energy resources in this country," he said.

"The president has lots of places to point his finger and of course we alone don’t set world energy prices, but we can affect whether we send billions of dollars out of our country to people who don’t like us very much and we can determine whether energy resources we take advantage of here create jobs here, and we can determine whether we have an effect on those energy prices by having an abundant supply here. The president has done all of that wrong. It has got to change."