House Dems, GOP Unify to Block Biden from Selling U.S. Oil Reserves to China

In a bipartisan move on Thursday, the House of Representatives passed legislation that bans the sale of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to China.

The Protecting America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve from China Act received overwhelming support, with 218 Republicans and 113 Democrats voting in favor.

Chairwoman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Washington Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R), introduced the bill, which is one of seven bills guaranteed to receive a vote under the House rules package.

Rep. McMorris Rodgers stated in a floor speech, “Draining our strategic reserves for political purposes and selling portions of it to China is a significant threat to our national security.”

“The administration is not just hurting our own ability to respond to emergencies and national security events, they are actively bolstering the oil reserves of our most dangerous geopolitical adversary, the Chinese Communist Party. This is unacceptable and it must stop,” McMorris Rodgers added.

She said the bill would help end what she called President Joe Biden’s “abuse of our strategic reserves” and accused him of using the reserve to “cover up his failed policies’’ that she said are driving up energy prices and inflation.

The measure is the first in a series of GOP proposals aimed at “unleashing American energy production,’’ McMorris Rodgers went on to say, before hinting at future moves. “There’s more to come. This is just the beginning,” she said.

Since 2021, the Biden administration has sold nearly 6 million barrels of oil to the Chinese state oil company Sinopec.

In total, the administration sold over 260 million barrels of oil in 2021 and 2022 in order to stabilize gas prices.

Republicans have raised questions about whether Hunter Biden may have personally benefited financially from the sale, given his connections to Sinopec.

The House rules package, which was negotiated by GOP leadership and 20 Republicans, includes bills addressing illegal immigration and rising crime, in addition to the oil sale ban.

Other bills, such as cutting funding for the Internal Revenue Service and requiring doctors to provide medical care to infants born alive after botched abortions, have already passed the lower chamber, but are unlikely to become law.

The current regulations permit the sale of crude oil from the Strategic Reserve to the highest bidder, which includes American subsidiaries of foreign oil companies.

As a result, last year, a significant amount of oil from the U.S. reserves was exported to China, including to a subsidiary of China’s state-run oil company, Sinopec.

“By law we are required to select the highest value bid to ensure the best return for taxpayers, and since 2017 the vast majority of oil sold from the reserve is sold to American entities,” the Energy Department said, per The Washington Times.

Over the last five years, less than 3% of oil from the strategic reserve has gone to China, officials said, The Times notes.

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