LaMalfa votes to protect Strategic Petroleum Reserve, energy independence

Today, Congressman Doug LaMalfa voted in support of H.R. 21, the Strategic Production Response Act, to restore America’s depleted Strategic Petroleum Reserves and fortify domestic energy independence. This bill would require the Biden Administration to replenish and maintain the SPR, ensuring our nation is prepared for a weather or wartime emergency, and require that any future non-emergency releases are accompanied with a plan from the Secretary of Energy to increase the percentage of federal lands and waters leased for oil and gas production.

In the first two years of the Biden Administration, more than 250 million barrels of oil – approximately 40 percent of the reserve – had been drained from the SPR, with no plan to replenish it. The SPR is the world’s largest supply of emergency crude oil.  Over the last two years the SPR has been depleted to its lowest level in nearly 40 years in an attempt to reduce high energy prices both domestically and overseas, including over one million barrels to a Chinese Communist Party-affiliated company.

“President Biden blocking domestic oil production and relying on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is like quitting your job and expecting to live off of your piggy bank,” LaMalfa said. “President Biden has shown he would rather destroy American jobs, allow gas prices to increase to as much as $7 a gallon, deplete our Strategic Petroleum Reserve by nearly half, and buy oil from OPEC nations than unleash American energy production and lower prices. Our nation has the largest oil reserve in the world, all we have to do is drill for it. It is flat out dangerous and irresponsible to deplete our domestic energy supply so that we depend on adversarial nations in an attempt to also force consumers to switch to costly electric vehicles. This bill will require President Biden to put the wellbeing of American families and workers first.”