E&C Republicans Demand Answers from Secretary Granholm on Undisclosed Talks with Top CCP Energy Official

Letter

We are troubled by recent reports that you, in your official capacity as Secretary of Energy, had multiple conversations with the Chinese Communist Party's top energy official just days before the Biden administration announced it would release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) in 2021. This is concerning given the Department of Energy's (DOE) mismanagement of the SPR, which has left our country more vulnerable to energy supply disruptions and strengthened the leverage of our adversaries to use energy as a geopolitical weapon.

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The Biden administration has helped support China's national security at the expense of our own security by using our strategic energy supplies to help the Chinese build up their own strategic reserves. The House of Representatives, led by the Committee on Energy and Commerce, has worked to protect against this abuse by passing H.R. 22, the Protecting American's Strategic Petroleum Reserve from China Act to prohibit the Biden administration from selling any products from the reserve to China, and H.R. 21, the Strategic Production Response Act, to ensure the reserve is adequately available during a true emergency.

Despite these Congressional efforts to hold the Biden administration accountable for undermining our energy security, the DOE apparently is still looking to China as an example and allegedly coordinating with them prior to SPR releases. China poses one of the greatest economic, security, and geopolitical threats to the United States, while continuing to be one the world's worst polluters. As a result of this administration's war on American energy and political abuse of the SPR, Americans have become more vulnerable to true energy and national security emergencies while China has profited.

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