Bill To Bar U.S. From Selling Oil Reserves to China Passes House With Bipartisan Support

Collin AndersonJanuary 12, 2023

Vote after Free Beacon report shows Biden sold one Million reserve barrels Chinese oil giant House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. (R. Calif. / Reuters

Thursday’s House vote passed a bill to prevent the United States selling its oil resources to China. This follows the Washington Free Beacon expose of the Biden administration.”s decision to sell nearly one million reserve barrels to a Chinese oil giant.

The bill received wide bipartisan backing, with a majority of House Democrats—113 of the 210 who voted—joining their Republican counterparts to support it.

The vote”This bipartisan nature is a blow for President Joe Biden. After a July free beacon Report Biden had sold 950,000 Strategic Petroleum Reserve barrels (to Unipec), the trading arm of China Petrochemical Corporation. The Democrat’s administration defended this move. Ian Samss, White House spokesperson for example. Accused Republicans who condemned the sale “lying”” and “Spreading false conspiracy theories about President Obama” Many House Democrats, however, disagreed, and the bill will head to the Senate with wide support from both parties.

The White House did not return a request for comment.

While many House Democrats rallied around the bill, some of their colleagues vocally opposed it. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D., Texas), for example, said that the bill would inhibit the president”The ability to respond to domestic crises like that in Texas last Year. “This legislation literally says, if the president has the need and necessity to protect the American people, it will not be allowed.” Lee”s characterization of the bill, which ensures that “Petroleum products will not be exported into the People”s Republic of China,” It is false.

Rep. Morgan Luttrell, R. Texas, applauded the bill”s passing in a Thursday statement:

“The Biden administration”s anti-American energy agenda stamped out our energy independence and boosted our reliance on foreign oil, sending prices through the roof. We should not be selling emergency oil reserves to a geopolitical adversary, especially at a time when our country is facing an unprecedented energy crisis.”