(Bloomberg) -- President Joe Biden warned oil companies not to hike gasoline prices in the wake of a hurricane barreling toward Florida -- the second time this week he’s voiced concern about rising pump prices.

“Do not -- let me repeat, do not, do not -- use this as an excuse to raise gasoline prices in America,” Biden said to lead off his remarks at a White House hunger conference on Wednesday.

“The price of oil has stayed relatively low,” he added. “It kept going down, the price of gas should be going down as well.”

Biden’s approval rating plummeted earlier this year over unusually high inflation, including gasoline prices that exceeded $5 a gallon, on average, in June. Prices fell by more than $1 a gallon to about $3.68 last week, on average, according to the automobile club AAA, but have begun to rise again even before Hurricane Ian makes landfall in Florida.

The recent gains are due to refinery outages across the Midwest and California that have tightened already-low supplies of the motor fuel.

“My experts informed me that production of only about 190,000 barrels a day has been impacted by the storm so far -- less than 2% of the United States daily production impacted for a very short period of time,” Biden said. “This small, temporary storm impact on oil production provides no excuse, no excuse for price increases at the pump.”

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.