Timothy Gardner
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A measure in U.S. funding legislation unveiled by congressional leaders on Sunday would block China from buying oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
The push for a hard line on China is one of the few truly bipartisan sentiments in the deeply divided U.S. Congress, and lawmakers have introduced dozens of bills aimed at eliminating competition with the Chinese government.
The issue of selling SPR to China escalated after President Joe Biden, a Democrat, announced the sale of 180 million barrels of SPR oil in 2022 to curb gasoline prices, which have risen sharply since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
That same year, SPR sold 1 million barrels to UNIPEC America, the Houston-based subsidiary of China’s Sinopec (OTC:). In 2017, under former President Donald Trump, some of SPR’s oil was sold to PetroChina International, a subsidiary of Chinese state oil company PetroChina Co Ltd.
The SPR currently holds more than 360 million barrels of oil, but is near a 40-year low due to sales in 2022.
Last July, the Democratic-controlled Senate passed a bill banning the export of SPR oil to China by a vote of 85 to 14. Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat, said at the time that it creates the illusion of solving the problem while having very little political clout and likely doing more harm than good.
US oil companies sold 83 million barrels of oil to China in 2022.
Congressional negotiators unveiled a 1,050-page bill Sunday that would fund six of the dozen government segments for which Congress is tasked with appropriating money, with the next six due later this month.
The US House of Representatives will have to vote on the bill first before the Senate can pass the package by Friday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said. The House of Representatives is scheduled to return to Washington on Tuesday.