Biden’s Sale Of SPR Oil To The Chinese Is Worse Than You Think

Tucker Carlson called it grounds for impeachment last night, and the basic optics of selling off oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to the Chinese – while China is at the same time buying discounted oil from Russia in defiance of Joe Biden’s called-for boycott of Russian oil – are enough to warrant such talk. The point of liquidating the SPR, supposedly, was to get more of it into the production stream that ends at the gas pump and therefore bring fuel prices down without destroying the economy.

Which was a flawed and cynical premise to begin with, of course, much like emptying your savings account to pay your bills is a suspect strategy compared to going out and getting a job.

Dumping the SPR, which Biden has been so aggressive about that it’s now at the lowest level of reserve it’s been since 1986, was never going to solve the problem of a lack of supply of oil on the market. And that lack of supply is the product, exclusively, of Joe Biden’s policies making it more difficult for producers to get it out of the ground and refine it into fuel.

Biden has altered none of those policies, by the way.

You’re just waiting for the punch line for this, aren’t you? Because with Biden there is always some sleazy, poorly hidden personal angle which colors the utterly indefensible decisions he makes. And this is no exception. Per the Washington Free Beacon…

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. The Biden administration claimed the move would “address the pain Americans are feeling at the pump” and “help lower energy costs.” More than five million barrels of oil released from the U.S. emergency reserves, however, were sent overseas last month, according to a Wednesday Reuters report. At least one shipment of American crude went to China, the report said.

The Biden administration also claimed the Unipec sale would “support American consumers and the global economy in response to Vladimir Putin’s war of choice against Ukraine” and combat “Putin’s price hike.” But as the war rages on, Unipec has continued to purchase Russian oil. In May, for example, the company “significantly increased the number of hired tankers to ship a key crude from eastern Russia,” Bloomberg reported. That decision came roughly one month after Unipec said it would purchase “no more Russian oil going forward” once “shipments that have arrived in March and due to arrive in April” were fulfilled.

Unipec is Sinopec. Why is that important here?

You probably already have guessed.

Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, is tied to Sinopec. In 2015, a private equity firm he cofounded bought a $1.7 billion stake in Sinopec Marketing. Sinopec went on to enter negotiations to purchase Gazprom in March, one month after the Biden administration sanctioned the Russian gas giant.

Biden campaigned heavily against the oil and gas industry in 2020, promising to “end fossil fuel.” He went on to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline and implement a moratorium on new gas leases on federal land during his first month in office. Biden’s energy secretary, meanwhile, is working with left-wing activists who want to eliminate fossil fuels, and in late October, House Oversight and Reform Committee Democrats pushed top oil executives to produce less gas due to climate change.

Gas prices have since soared to record highs. In mid June, the national average for a gallon of gas surpassed $5 for the first time ever. Still, the White House has assured Americans that they need to pay high gas prices to support the “liberal world order.”

Hunter Biden has been doing oil deals with the Chinese for half a decade or more, largely, we now know, on behalf of The Big Guy – who we also know has lied about his knowledge of Hunter’s foreign business exploits.

And now we find out that he’s liquidating a national strategic resource that his own policies have made more scarce to a foreign entity with which his son has done a great deal of business.

Carlson is right that this is impeachable. It’s probably even more impeachable than Carlson expected.