Two U.S. senators introduced a bill on Thursday (March 21) to strengthen the ban on the sale of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to China.
The bill, introduced by Republican Senator Joni Ernst and Democratic Senator John Fetterman, would ensure that companies owned or controlled by the Chinese government cannot purchase oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. of oil.
A funding bill signed by President Joe Biden this month bans Chinese companies from buying oil, but it includes an exception if the oil is not exported to China.
“This bipartisan bill will ensure that America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve does not fall into the hands of those who seek to harm us and ensure that (Chinese Communist Party)-controlled companies do not hoard taxpayer-subsidized oil,” Ernst said. make money.”
The bill would also prohibit the sale of strategic oil reserves to countries including Russia, Venezuela and Syria, none of which are significant buyers of strategic oil reserves.
“Our adversaries should not be able to purchase oil from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve – that’s just common sense,” Fetterman said.
The desire to take a tough stance on China is one of the rare bipartisan sentiments in a deeply divided U.S. Congress. Lawmakers have introduced dozens of bills involving competition with the Chinese government.
In 2022, Democrat Joe Biden announced the sale of 180 million barrels of oil from the “Strategic Petroleum Reserve” to curb soaring gasoline prices after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This is the largest sale of strategic petroleum reserves in history. Since then, the controversy over the sale of strategic oil reserves to China has intensified.
That year, 1 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve were sold to UNIPEC America, an offshoot of the Chinese company Sinopec, based in Houston. In 2017, during the presidency of Republican Donald Trump, some oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was sold to PetroChina International, the state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation. A subsidiary of PetroChina Co Ltd.
