Following news that US oil was being transferred to China and other countries in need on Thursday, a number of GOP politicians harshly condemned President Joe Biden.
In contrast to US refiners, more than five million barrels of oil released from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) have gone to countries in Europe and Asia.
To address the record fuel costs hitting American consumers, Biden directed the Department of Energy to release a total of nearly 260 million barrels of oil kept in the SPR during the last eight months.
Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, made a statement, “The American people deserve answers as to why our emergency energy reserves are being sent to foreign adversaries like the Chinese Communist Party, compromising our energy security and national security. President Biden needs to remember that our strategic energy reserves are for emergencies, not to cover-up bad policies. America needs to flip the switch and increase our capacity to produce and refine oil here at home. Now is not the time to use our strategic stockpile.”
In a letter to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm in early June, McMorris Rodgers and Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., the leading Republican on the panel’s energy subcommittee, demanded details about how the administration’s SPR policy was empowering China. The two GOP leaders made notice of allegations that China had added to its stockpile by buying oil from US emergency stockpiles.
McMorris Rodgers said that Granholm has yet to respond to the committee over the administration’s poor handling of US oil stocks.
