President Joe Biden’s green energy policies are the key cause of skyrocketing gas prices, not the Russian invasion of Ukraine or the fact that federal leases for oil and gas exploration are not being fully utilized, according to an energy industry expert. “Wide swaths of the elected government and administrative state have decided that investments in oil and gas must be minimized and eventually eradicated. There must be steady downward pressure on oil and gas investments,” said Institute for Energy Research (IER) Chairman Tom Pyle. Pyle’s comment came in testimony on March 8 before the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s subcommittee on energy during a hearing on Electric Vehicles (EVs). The IER is an independent non-profit research group that favors continued reliance on fossil fuels. “Even as recently as two weeks ago—at the height of the [Biden] administration scrounging around for liquified natural gas they could send to the [European Union]—the Federal …