(The Center Square) – After the U.S. Department of Energy sold oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve to a Chinese company linked to the president’s son’s investment firm, Congressional Republicans are demanding answers and a nonprofit representing American energy workers is calling for a special investigation.
Nineteen members of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform sent a letter to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm asking why the DOE sold nearly 1 million barrels of oil from the SPR to Unipec America, the American subsidiary of a Chinese company, Sinopec. The private equity firm, BHR Partners, founded by the president’s son, Hunter Biden, invested $1.7 billion in Sinopec in 2015, the lawmakers note.
“The decision to sell to Unipec raises questions about why the Biden Administration is selling oil from the SPR to China, especially when the sale may enrich Hunter Biden, the President’s son,” they write. “This transaction is even more troubling given that evidence continues to mount showing the Biden family peddled access to the highest levels of government to enrich themselves.”
They also asked Granholm to brief them and provide “documents related to this matter.” This was their second request for a briefing. They asked for one in May about “DOE’s decision to deplete the SPR,” they said, and didn’t get one.
Granholm hasn’t released a statement or response to their request.
The nonprofit, Power The Future, has also called for a special prosecutor and for Congress to investigate, saying, “Given the Biden family ties to Chinese energy companies, it’s important the American people learn the facts from an independent investigation.”
“The Biden Administration sent critical resources to the communist Chinese, including one firm which has the president’s own son Hunter as an investor, at the same time Americans are struggling at the pump,” its executive director, Daniel Turner, said. “A special prosecutor should be appointed, and Congress needs to investigate because the American people deserve the truth and they’re not getting it from the White House.”
While Hunter Biden’s attorney, Chris Clark, told the New York Times in 2021 that he “no longer holds any interest, directly or indirectly” in BHR, the Washington Examiner reported that he maintains 10% ownership. The New York Post reported that Hunter Biden created BHR in 2013 with Chinese businessman Jonathan Li.
The SPR, the world’s largest supply of emergency crude oil, is owned by the federal government and stored in underground salt caverns in four storage sites, two each in Texas and Louisiana.
The DOE so far has authorized three SPR emergency sales, the latest of which was June 10 for 40.1 million barrels. The lawmakers are questioning an April sale in which contracts were awarded to 12 companies for 30 million barrels, including to Unipec America.
“The Biden Administration has taken significant steps to address the pain Americans are feeling at the pump as a result of Putin’s Price Hike,” the DOE said, adding that releasing 1 million barrels a day over a six-month period would lower the price of gasoline and other energy costs. But gasoline prices and inflation began increasing months before Russia invaded Ukraine and in June, gas surpassed $5 a gallon on average in the U.S. for the first time ever before trickling down in July.
“The SPR was created so the US would have a stockpile of crude oil supply to be used in the case of an emergency. It was never intended to provide oil to adversaries such as China,” the lawmakers argue.
Any company registered in the SPR’s Crude Oil Sales Offer Program is eligible to participate in the sale, the DOE says. And seven of the companies that received the April contracts are based in Texas.
SPR inventories are the lowest since 2004 and Gulf Coast refineries are operating at 97.9%, the most in three and a half years, Reuters reported.
Ultimately, there’d be no need to draw from the SPR, those in the energy industry argue, if the administration were prioritizing domestic production.
Kathleen Sgamma, president of Western Energy Alliance, told The Center Square that the “short-term policy of SPR releases is no substitute for the long-term energy security that comes with increased U.S. infrastructure and production. To bring down energy prices and replace the strategic reserves that President Biden is depleting, we need to increase production in the United States. Producers are increasing production, but lack of pipeline infrastructure and left-wing suppression of financing are hampering our ability to truly turn on the spigots and bring down energy prices.”
The alliance and many others have sued the administration over a range of policies it’s implemented that have hampered and halted domestic production, which they argue is a root cause of escalating energy prices and inflation.
Inflation grew “at a much faster rate than expected in large part due to the loss of American energy independence,” Turner said, adding that if President Biden “wants to stop his terrible inflation,” he “should be in America’s Permian Basin telling energy workers he’s going to get out of the way.”
The answers should be interesting—if they even get them.
And we should not be selling anything to China. In fact, we need to get a lot og business back over here that has gone over there.
So much for Joe’s statement that he knows nothing of Hunter’s business deals,,,,now he is directing it like the Biden business Chairman of the Bored.
What i want to know, is even IF THE GOP GETS the answers they are searching for..
WHAT EXACTLY DO They plan to DO WITH them!??!?!
Nineteen members of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform sent a letter to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm asking why the DOE sold nearly 1 million barrels of oil from the SPR to Unipec America, the American subsidiary of a Chinese company, Sinopec. The private equity firm, BHR Partners, founded by the president’s son, Hunter Biden, invested $1.7 billion in Sinopec in 2015, the lawmakers note.
“The decision to sell to Unipec raises questions about why the Biden Administration is selling oil from the SPR to China, especially when the sale may enrich Hunter Biden, the President’s son,” they write. “This transaction is even more troubling given that evidence continues to mount showing the Biden family peddled access to the highest levels of government to enrich themselves.”
Wouldn’t any rational person call this treason? But just like “crooked Hil-Liar-y Clinton” she even admitted to destroying evidence after it was subpoenaed and nothing was done about it. Nothing will ever happen to the corrupt puppet president Joe Biden or his son Hunter Biden.
BUT:
Nancy Pelosi admitted an unfortunate truth about her
orchestrate and fabricated President Trump’s impeachment “farce”
– It hinges on witness’s “allegations” not “proof”.
It’s Not A Question” Of “Proof”, It’s About “Allegations”
https://youtu.be/7dzhIxeF204
IF THIS doesn’t qualify as treason, WHAT EXACTLY Does anymore?
Paybck, kickback, something smells along the Delaware-Washington-Beijing corridor!
Section 3 – Treason Note
“Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
The Congress shall have power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.”
“Corruption of blood” refers to the fact that not only can the children not inherit from the “tainted” person, then cannot inherit from other relatives through the attainted person.”
The blood in this Biden Family is so tainted there is not an innocent drop to be found. Jail them all whose laundered filthy lucre can be found in the bank accounts of the whole clan of malicious money launderers. If we act now before Joe keels over, we can get the money back from the inheritors.
Our conservative congress people “requests” information from the energy secretary and she ignores their requests numerous times. It is time that our conservative congress people do more than just ask her for information and that should happen quickly. The dems in DC cannot continue to ignore questions and requests as if those conservatives do not even exist.
WAKE UP AMERICA AND TELL YOUR CONGRESS MEMBERS TO GET IN THE FIGHT AND GET ANSWERS!!!
For the sake of our country we now need, more than ever, to purge all the democrats from our government. That will be the only way we have to keep our constitutional republic from being destroyed by them. They want to replace it with their version of a socialists nation, with them in total control of course.
ITS Because they lack a spine, and unfortunately have lacked one, for decades..
Does this prove that both republicans and democrats are involved in these sales and do not have the courage to stop it unless they are making a profit by letting it happen?
The plot continues to thicken! The absolute INSANITY runs with ZERO consideration for our Country. The Biden Crime family has got to know that the money train will eventually be derailed and frankly they should ALL be convicted of TREASON and hanged for their disgusting gluttonous appetite for the all mighty dollar at the expense of every taxpaying AMERICAN CITIZEN!!
First, what rational reason could there be for enriching China, our enemy who hates us until they want something?
Second, it must be good to be a Biden. Can you begin to imagine the response if this scenario was acted out by Eric and Donald, Jr. while their father was in the White House?