(Headline USA) Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., blasted President Joe Biden this week for continuing to import Russian oil instead of increasing the U.S.’s own energy production.
Citing a recent report that revealed the Biden administration is still importing more than 500,000 barrels of oil products from Russia a month, Manchin dismissed Biden as a hypocrite.
“While Americans decry what is happening in Ukraine, the United States continues to allow the import of more than half a million barrels per day of crude oil and other petroleum products from Russia during this time of war,” he said in a statement. “This makes no sense at all and represents a clear and present danger to our nation’s energy security.”
The “entire world is watching as Vladimir Putin uses energy as a weapon in an attempt to extort and coerce our European allies” while Biden does nothing to help them, said Manchin, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Instead of continuing to bow to the demands of leftist environmentalists, Biden “can and must ramp up domestic energy production and increase access to our abundant resources and technologies,” he continued.
Biden announced last week that he would increase economic sanctions against Russia, but noted that these sanctions would not apply to Russia’s energy industry.
“You know, in our sanctions package, we specifically designed [it] to allow energy payments to continue,” he explained.
Republicans and Manchin have pointed out that Biden’s dependence on Russia’s energy infrastructure is the result of environmental policies that have crippled the U.S.’s own energy production. As a result, oil prices are ticking up towards $96 a barrel, which is $20 more than two months ago.
President Biden is protecting Russian energy. But he sanctions American energy.
— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) February 25, 2022
