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There comes a point where things are so messed up, that nothing surprises us anymore. That’s where we find ourselves under liberal leadership on so many issues, especially energy policy.

Did you hear the latest on some of our Strategic Petroleum Reserves being sold off to foreign countries, including China?

Managed by the federal government, our Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR) is a large stockpile of emergency crude oil. It consists of roughly 700 million barrels stored in several massive underground salt caverns near the Gulf of Mexico. The purpose of the SPR is “primarily to reduce the impact of disruptions in supplies of petroleum products.” In other words, to supply crude oil during times of national emergency.

Even though high gas prices are crippling many Americans, they don’t rise to meet the definition or spirit of “national emergency.” Nevertheless, President Biden recently decided to release approximately one million barrels of crude oil every day from the SPR until October in a futile attempt to reduce gas prices. For context, that represents about 5% of our country’s daily use.

You might assume if we’re drawing down on our nation’s emergency crude oil reserves, at least that crude oil would be refined and used right here in the United States, right? Wrong! Last month according to news reports, roughly 5 MILLION barrels from our SPR were exported by tanker ships to Europe and Asia, including China of all places!

The truth is that American refineries are already operating at almost 95% of their capacity, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency. So when Biden wants to be seen as “doing something” on gas prices and decides to dump an additional million barrels a day from our emergency reserves, there’s really nowhere for that excess crude oil to go other than onto tanker ships to be sold to foreign countries.

But again, President Biden has botched American energy policy so badly that this news should surprise no one. He literally campaigned on ending fossil fuels, canceled Keystone XL on Day #1 of his administration, banned exploration on federal land, ended federal oil and gas lease sales, and implemented regulations galore. (I’ve covered this ad nauseum in previous posts.)

When prices inevitably shoot through the roof, he blames Russia, blames the very oil companies he’s trying to crush, blames the gas station owners, blames Trump, then ends up selling our emergency crude oil to foreign countries. Unbelievable.