Protecting America's Strategic Petroleum Reserve From China Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. McCOLLUM. Mr. Speaker, I rise to provide remarks on H.R. 22. Republicans brought H.R. 22, the Protecting America's Strategic Petroleum Reserve from China Act, to the House Floor today to prohibit selling oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to China.

This legislation would not be necessary if the previous Republican majority hadn't lifted a ban on crude oil exports, in place since 1975, at the urging of their Big Oil friends in 2015.

China has now exploited this harmful Republican policy change by purchasing and stockpiling American crude oil. U.S. exports of crude oil to China increased nearly 100-fold under President Trump. During the Trump administration, U.S. oil companies sent over 391 million barrels of crude oil to China.

House Democrats had legislation (the Buy low and Sell High Act) that would go further to protect American interests by not only banning the export of Strategic Petroleum Reserve oil to China, but also to adversaries such as North Korea, Russia, Iran, and any other country under U.S. sanctions. If Republicans really wanted to tackle this issue, they would have worked with us in a bipartisan manner to pass this legislation last Congress.

Republicans passed this legislation to fix a political problem they created for themselves, which in the end, doesn't solve the problem.

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