Biden has the power to lower your price at the gas pump, and he's facing increasing pressure to do so

• Biden could cool gasoline prices, one of the biggest drivers of today's historic inflation.
• The White House is reportedly eyeing options as lawmakers and Americans call for a fix.

While Biden can't do much about overall inflation, he has a few options when it comes to rising gasoline prices. And he's being urged to choose one.

Prices of nearly every good and service in the US are soaring at the fastest pace since 1990 — especially when it comes to energy. With Biden's approval ratings plummeting and Americans' recovery hopes dashed, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are pressuring his administration to fight back.

Energy prices climbed 4.8% in October, according to the Consumer Price Index. Gasoline prices leaped 6.1% — the largest one-month jump since March. While the president can't quash broad inflation like the Federal Reserve can, but the White House has a few tools to solve the problem.

Biden has 3 options to fight inflation at the pump

Likely the easiest one to leverage is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The reserve is a government complex of deep underground storage wells that, as of Friday, hold more than 600 million barrels of crude oil. The SPR isn't usually used to change gasoline prices, but key Democrats are already pressing the administration to tap the massive stockpile.

"We're here today because we need immediate relief at the gas pump and the place to look is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said during a Sunday news conference in New York. "Let's get the price of gas down right now. And this will do it."

To be sure, using the SPR probably wouldn't solve the price problem for good. The reserve stores crude oil, meaning it would take some time for oil to be refined into pumpable gasoline. The stockpile is also limited and it can't permanently close the gap between driver demand and gasoline supply.

But the world's most influential oil group has already denied Biden's calls for more product. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries declined to boost production earlier in November despite soaring prices and overwhelming demand.

OPEC's refusal has led the White House to prepare a multifaceted approach for lowering prices. Along with tapping the SPR, the Biden administration is mulling regulatory changes that would allow refiners to turn more crude oil into gasoline, according to Bloomberg. Among the actions is a relaxing of the rule to mix gasoline with biofuels. Easing the mandate would help more supply hit the market and, in turn, ease prices.

The White House could also ban oil exports to keep more supply in the US, but administration officials have balked at such measures so far. Holding back exports could hurt relations with other countries, particularly those the Biden administration aims to restore diplomacy with after disputes with the Trump administration, Bloomberg reported.

No matter what Biden does to cool gasoline inflation, the fixes don't need to last forever. Energy prices will fall by 7% over the next 12 months, David Kelly, chief global strategist at JPMorgan, said in a Monday note. Oil production is expected to "increase sharply" in the year ahead, he added.

The eventual cooldown won't just dampen gas prices. A 7% drop in energy prices will subtract 0.5% from broad inflation, Kelly said. If the decline in energy prices is the only change in CPI from October 2021 to October 2022, the inflation measure will still plunge to 3.5% from 6.2%, he added.

In other words, the best long-term solution is to wait it out.