America's Strategic Oil Reserves

The Biden administration in April sanctioned the sale of our nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve to the highest bidder. They have done so under the logic that putting more oil on the global market at a time when Russia has an energy stranglehold on Europe could force down the pump price of gasoline.

One could ask, as Congressional mid-term elections loom, and the price of gas soared to five dollars a gallon, has the White House made a strategic energy decision based on politics rather than on what is in the best security interests of our nation -- because the country that is among the high bidders for our oil reserves is China.

This is the China that has obliterated Tibet.

This is the China that practices slavery, torture in internment camps, forced labor, child labor and organ-harvesting on live detainees.

This is the China that has choked democracy in Hong Kong.

This is the China that threatens the freedom of 23 million Taiwanese.

This is the China that has sought to cripple an Australian military plane flying over international waters.

This is the China that has fired missiles into Japan's exclusive economic zone and tried to blind US pilots with laser beams.

This is the China that is cornering the market in rare earth minerals, such as cobalt, needed to make electric batteries, stealing US technology and buying up US farmland, some near a military base.

This is the China that has bought land just 12 miles from a North Dakota US Military base, "the backbone of all US military communication."

This is the China that has allied itself with fellow aggressor nations, Russia and Iran.

This is a China that has just launched an aircraft supercarrier that equals those of the United States, and to make a point to the world, named it Fujian for the province that borders the Taiwan straits.

One can only wonder where the fuel will come from that will power its turbine engines as this massive carrier conducts operations that threaten the security of our Asian allies while confronting America's historic role in the Pacific.

The Biden Administration, instead of selling our oil, should be stockpiling our strategic petroleum reserves as if they were preparing for battle: the reality is we are in the midst of an undeclared conflict. It pits the future of freedom and democracy against a regime that openly has every intention of confronting the United States in Asia and elsewhere.

Why, then, is President Joe Biden depleting America's Strategic Petroleum Reserve just when the US should be enlarging it? Why does the Biden administration seem as if it is trying to weaken America just at a time when China is becoming increasingly more aggressive?

© Gatestone Institute