'Pretty Shameful': Biden Admin Has Sold Nearly 6 Million Barrels Of Strategic Oil Reserves To China

The Biden administration sold nearly six million barrels of oil from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve since July 2021 to a Chinese state-run energy firm, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation review of Department of Energy data. From July 2021 until the end of June 2022, Biden's energy department auctioned off 5.9 million barrels of strategic reserve oil to Unipec, the trading division of the Chinese state-owned Sinopec, in an effort to increase the supply of oil globally and drive down fuel costs in the U.S. that were exacerbated by the war in Ukraine and Biden's climate policies. SPR oil is sold to the highest bidder, and some of the businesses entitled to make bids are American subsidiaries of foreign corporations like Unipec. The DOE sold four million barrels to Unipec in the fall of 2021, almost six months before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, making over $252 million from the sale, according to the FY22 Emergency Drawdown No. 2 Successful Awards Report. In July 2022 the DOE sold 950,000 barrels to Unipec for roughly $113 million, according to the FY22 Emergency Drawdown No. 3A Successful Awards Report. "It's helping out a bit, but it's still a very bad policy," Lieberman told the DCNF. "The fact that we're using the Strategic Petroleum Reserve rather than drilling offshore or getting more oil to the United States through the Keystone XL pipeline, the fact that we're not doing these things is really pretty shameful." "The Strategic Petroleum Reserve never really was a substitute for that and now to hear that this oil is going to China is problematic because it undercuts their rationale even more," said Lieberman.