"As gas prices go up, so does the cost of everyday life," Republican House Speaker John Boehner told reporters as he unveiled a campaign dubbed the "America Energy Initiative" to increase supplies and roll back regulations.

"It costs more to drive to work, to buy groceries, or just to get the kids to school. And at a time when our economy already isn't creating enough jobs, rising gas prices hurt the very people we need to lead us out of our economic crisis: Small businesses," he said.

Boehner said Republicans, who control the House of Representatives but not the Senate, would tackle the issue in "bite-sized chunks" rather than one sweeping energy bill.

Most market analysts have pinned the recent rise in oil and gas prices on regional turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa.

Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell accused the Obama administration of throttling new oil exploration and warned against new regulations that he said threatened the fragile US economic recovery.

"Now is the time to be asking what we can do to increase domestic energy production, not proposing ways to squeeze American families even more," said McConnell, who predicted US consumers would be dependent on fossil fuels "for decades to come."

The White House responded to the criticisms -- longstanding Republican arguments -- in a post on its official blog underscoring its commitment to "increasing responsible domestic energy production -- including oil and gas."

"In fact, oil production last year rose to its highest level since 2003," Obama's deputy assistant for energy and climate change, Heather Zichal, said in the post.

Earlier, a senior Republican senator dismissed arguments that violent unrest across the Middle East was a main cause of surging oil and gasoline prices, placing the blame instead on plans to curb greenhouse gases.

"A lot of people are saying that the gas prices that are going up are a result, partially, of what's happening over there," said Senator James Inhofe, his party's senior member on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and a vocal climate change skeptic. "That isn't the real problem."

Inhofe said that "the real problem" was Obama's efforts to enact a cap-and-trade plan to curb emissions of greenhouse gases blamed by scientists for global warming.

"My message today simply is the higher gas prices are simply a product of this administration's goal," said the lawmaker.

The White House's foes have been ramping up calls for more domestic production of energy, blasting Obama's decision to impose an offshore drilling moratorium after a giant Gulf spill last year from a well exploited by BP.

Following the spill, the largest ever manmade environmental disaster in the United States, Washington imposed a moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, which it lifted in October.

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