While the Biden administration’s move to release 1 million barrels of oil from the strategic reserve, reported in Friday’s edition of the Williamsport Sun-Gazette, may be the most immediate and direct method to address rising gas prices, we still find it unfortunate that the U.S. is in this position.

Unfortunate and unnecessary.

The U.S. has ample opportunities to produce its own oil. A number of factors have spent decades converging to prevent oil producers from fully using this resource to meet America’s needs.

The Biden administration, it must be acknowledged, is not wrong when it notes that leases have been granted that the oil companies have never acted on. But that is only a part of the story — and we suspect a small part at that.

The reality is that regulatory oversight has hampered development, both of oil wells and perhaps more importantly of refineries.

That regulatory climate is of course necessary, but we hope Congress and the White House can have honest conversations about whether the current rules and regulations are truly effective or needlessly burdensome.

Duplication and redundancy should be identified, and in the interests of our country’s economic health, eliminated.

With a Democratic administration and Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, addressing this need will be a challenge.

Because the other, likely more challenging reality is that the Democratic Party’s base is too hostile to developing oil and gas as resources.

Too many of the Democratic Party’s supporters have unrealistic ideas about how quickly the U.S. can turn to solar, wind and other renewable sources of energy.

They downplay the truth that affordable battery storage for wind- and solar-generated power is not feasible yet.

While we welcome developments that move the U.S. in this direction, the expectation that oil-free energy is just around the corner is naive — and was even more naive through much of the preceding decades.

And that naivete has left us with a short-term solution instead of a better strategy.