Twenty-four hours after news reports that five million barrels of oil from America’s emergency supply has been shipped abroad to China, India and the EU by the Biden administration, Democrats are silent — or at best baffled — by the news.
As gasoline prices began surging at the pump, President Biden announced the biggest-ever release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR ), one million barrels of oil per day for six months. Three months later, the price of oil is still above $100 a barrel and gas costs about $4.75/gallon.
According to Reuters, about 5 million barrels of that oil have gone to other nations, both friendly and unfriendly, in just the past month.
And a new report from the Washington Free Beacon says, “Biden’s Energy Department in April announced the sale of 950,000 Strategic Petroleum Reserve barrels to Unipec, the trading arm of the China Petrochemical Corporation. That company, which is commonly known as Sinopec, is wholly owned by the Chinese government.” And, they report, it has ties to Biden’s son Hunter.
Republicans aren’t happy.
“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,” House Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Cathy McMorris Rodgers told Fox News.
But Democrats, across the country and here in New Hampshire, have remained silent about the Biden administration’s actions. Sen. Maggie Hassan continues to decline to respond to repeated requests for comment about the exports of America’s emergency oil supply. However, she did post a tweet Thursday accusing “Big Oil” of “making record profits” by “keeping prices really, really high” — repeating a debunked conspiracy theory mocked by economists.
Hassan’s attack on oil companies for making money by selling oil during a time of record prices appears to be at odds with her demand they increase oil production and sell more product.
Reps. Annie Kuster and Chris Pappas were also silent about the report, unlike some of their House colleagues.
On Thursday, progressive Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) blasted the Biden administration for sending U.S. oil abroad at a time when it’s so expensive at home. “I don’t understand why we’re not having a ban on [oil] exports,” Khanna said. “We need to do more. People in my district are talking to me about gas prices, about higher food costs.”
Khanna’s proposal to temporarily block U.S. oil exports has some support among House Democrats, but it has not been embraced by any Granite State Democrats.
