Biden summons oil CEOs to discuss gas prices this week

The Biden administration has summoned the heads of seven top oil refining companies to Washington as part of a series of actions on gas prices this week after a week of tense back and forth with industry leaders.

The CEOs will meet Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm after the president blasted their high profits as not acceptable in a letter to the companies. In one response, Chevron CVX pushed back by saying Washington's approach was actually the culprit for high prices.

President Joe Biden's aides say they hope for a constructive conversation.

Gene Sperling, White House senior adviser, told Yahoo Finance Live on Wednesday that "let's put every idea on the table so that's not the president just scolding." He said that Biden will be giving a stern message to everyone to do everything they can, but the goal is results. The price of gas has risen dramatically in the last few months, with the most recent data from the American Automobile Association showing prices hovering around $5 a gallon. A number of factors have triggered the increases, including disruptions in the global oil markets following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The companies in the spotlight are Chevron, which received a letter from the president last week, and Marathon MRO Valero VLO ExxonMobil XOM Phillips 66 PSX BP, and Shell SHEL. I hope they come up with some real ideas and practical steps in the near term, said Biden, who is not scheduled to attend the meeting.

The White House wants to help companies to relax what they see as a refining bottleneck, the middle stage between crude oil production and the gas pump. The administration contends that some refining capacity was taken offline during the epidemic and hasn't come back quickly enough.

Chevron blames the problems on regulations and lack of clarity from DC. Michael Wirth, the CEO of Chevron, who will be attending the meeting, wrote recently that we need an honest dialogue.

Industry observers have been skeptical about how much wiggle room oil companies really have, and how quickly anything could change in the short-term. In the past few weeks, crude processing has been running at 93% -- 94% of the theoretical maximum operable capacity.

Granholm said that we are going into this to have an earnest conversation. Let's see how that conversation goes. She is not ruling out using the Defense Production Act to force oil companies to ramp up supply, which could push prices down.

A senior administration official said in a press conference that they hope that the discussion will include ways the federal government can be helpful in order to bring that additional capacity online as quickly as possible. Oil experts predict that prices will drop slightly in the coming days, due to market forces, which may ease tensions at the meeting with industry executives.

Sperling echoed the Biden team's hope that getting everyone in a room could lead to progress. He stressed that he doesn't think people should be offended because the president is standing up for consumers who are being squeezed at the gas pump.