- According to the Energy Department website, the SPR is “the world’s largest supply of emergency crude oil … established primarily to reduce the impact of disruptions in supplies of petroleum products and to carry out obligations of the United States under the international energy program.”
- Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ), the top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, voted against the bill.
- Under the legislation passed Thursday, the energy secretary, “[n]otwithstanding any other provision of law,” is prohibited from drawing down or selling petroleum products from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve “to any entity that is under the ownership, control, or influence of” China’s Communist Party “except on the condition that such petroleum products will not be exported to the People’s Republic of China.”
