(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) On its mission to drain America’s emergency oil reserves to dangerously record-low levels, the Biden administration reportedly consulted with Chinese government officials from an energy company linked to the president’s son, Hunter Biden.
During President Joe Biden’s attempt to sway voters with marginally lower gas prices leading up to last year’s midterms, the administration raided millions of barrels from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. But not before first clearing it with China, according to Fox News.
Energy Department Secretary Jennifer Granholm initially discussed the regime’s plan to tap the US Strategic Petroleum Reserves with China, before the move was made public.
“China ramped up its purchases of crude oil from Russia and the United States to boost its own reserves, even as oil prices surged and President Biden called for a coordinated release,” House Energy and Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., and former GOP Rep. Fred Upton wrote to Granholm last year.
“As a result, China may now control the world’s largest stockpile of oil, with total crude inventories estimated at 950 million barrels,” they added.
Granholm reportedly spoke multiple times with China National Energy Administration Chairman Zhang Jianhua before Biden began selling off America’s emergency oil, which China promptly acquired in a buying frenzy.
Energy titan Unipec, a partner with state-controlled China Petrochemical Corporation, was among the buyers. Jianhua had previously held a leadership role with the company, which had extensive ties to Hunter Biden.
The president’s son “served as a founding board member of BHR Partners from 2013 through April 2020,” a company that was a stakeholder in Unipec’s parent company, wrote ZeroHedge.
Granholm claimed the talks with Hunter Biden-linked business associates were focused on climate change, and not the impending release of America’s emergency oil supply that China quickly grabbed.
“Secretary Granholm’s multiple closed-door meetings with a CCP-connected energy official raise serious questions about the level of Chinese influence on the Biden administration’s energy agenda,” APT Executive Director Caitlin Sutherland told Fox News Digital.
“Instead of focusing on creating real energy independence for America, Granholm has been too busy parroting Chinese energy propaganda and insisting ‘we can all learn from what China is doing,’” Sutherland continued. “The public deserves to know the extent to which Chinese officials are attempting to infiltrate U.S. energy policy and security.”
Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., blasted the sale to Unipec as “rank incompetence,” according to an Epoch Times report.
“The Biden White House obviously didn’t see a problem with loading millions of barrels from our strategic reserves onto tankers bound for foreign countries, which likely explains why they don’t see a problem selling our emergency crude oil to a Chinese gas company with ties to Hunter Biden’s investment firm,” Norman said.
Meanwhile, Biden has failed to replenish the SPR, which remains at historically low levels, as gas prices again inch upwards for American consumers.
