{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://estes.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=4221", "Estes Highlights Perils of Biden's Anti-Energy Independence Agenda", "2023-11-03", "2023", "2023-11", "Republican", "House", "KS", "Ron Estes", "E000298", "estes.house.gov", "estes", "https://estes.house.gov/news/documentquery.aspx?DocumentTypeID=27", "scraper", "Yesterday, Rep. Ron Estes (R-Kansas) published an op-ed in RealClearEnergy diving into the history of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and highlighting how the Biden administration's anti-energy independence agenda has hurt Americans, but also risked our national security.\n\nYou can read the op-ed here or below.\n\nBiden\u2019s Election Gimmick Undercut National Security\n\nPublished Nov. 2, 2023, by RealClearEnergy\n\nThe chaotic turn of events around the globe in the past weeks has shown that history repeats itself.\n\nFifty years ago when the Yom Kippur War raged in the Middle East, Americans felt the pinch as oil-rich countries blocked U.S. imports of their crude in response to U.S. support of Israel. Now, the atrocious tragedies committed by barbaric Hamas terrorists are again causing chaos and strife in the Middle East.\n\nBecause of planning in the 1970s and under the right leadership today, this conflict shouldn\u2019t spark concerns about gas prices for Americans as we learned our lesson a half-century ago and created the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Unfortunately, President Biden disregarded these lessons to score cheap political points at the expense of the American consumer and our national security.\n\nThe week of January 20, 2021, when President Biden was sworn into office the national average for a gallon of gas was just under $2.40. That means a family with a minivan could easily fill up their tank for under $50.\n\nThen Biden\u2019s anti-energy independence agenda kicked in. He made it clear that he wanted to \u201cend fossil fuel\u201d during his campaign and got right to work on day one to implement his devastating plan. He ended the Keystone XL Pipeline, proposed tax increases on oil and gas companies and pushed policies that benefited \u201cgreen\u201d energy and Chinese companies over reliable American energy.\n\nBy the time Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February of 2022, Biden\u2019s policies had already pushed the national weekly average to $3.53. Biden \u2013 desperate to hide his failed policies \u2013 quickly blamed the high cost of gas on the invasion, despite the fact that under a year of his policies prices had already increased by more than a dollar per gallon.\n\nWith the Russian invasion pushing prices even higher in an election year, Biden decided to act.\n\nNo, he didn\u2019t reverse his anti-American energy policies \u2013 that would have been the right long-term solution. Instead, he traded in our safety net of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to save a few votes. In spite of the SPR gimmick, prices are still averaging around $3.53, so filling up that minivan now costs close to $70 \u2013 and our country\u2019s safety.\n\nThe Strategic Petroleum Reserve is a national security asset. When full, it prevents the U.S. from being subject to global crises that could limit the availability of crude oil or the whims of our adversaries who may wish to punish us by withholding exports.\n\nThe idea was supported by multiple presidential administrations like Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower in the middle of the 20th century, but it wasn\u2019t until OPEC\u2019s oil embargo of 1973-74 that the need was greatly recognized. President Gerald Ford eventually signed the Energy Policy and Conservation Act into law in December 1975.\n\nNearly 50 years after its creation the SPR is at its lowest level since 1984. And it couldn\u2019t come at a more perilous time in our world.\n\nEstablishing the SPR was a way for us to safeguard against OPEC\u2019s impulses and to reduce our dependence on foreign countries should there be a global conflict \u2013 but here we are again facing a crisis in the Middle East.\n\nNow would be a good time to have a robust Strategic Petroleum Reserve on which to rely.\n\nThe right thing to do \u2013 after two years of fruitlessly doing the wrong thing \u2013 would be to replenish the SPR, and fast. But the Biden administration has abandoned this responsibility. The whole intention was to have SPR as a backstop, but President Biden threw that away for a political gimmick.\n\nLast October, the White House announced that it would implement a \u201cfirst-of-its-kind rule\u201d establishing a system of fixed-rate price contracts for replenishing the SPR. Per the administration\u2019s policy, they intend to purchase \u201ccrude oil for the SPR when prices are at or below about $67 to $72 per barrel.\u201d The administration\u2019s logic was that the Department of Energy should get a preferred rate when buying for the SPR, well below what the public market was bearing.\n\nThis untested fixed-price bid system imposed by the White House has allowed the administration to ignore its responsibility to resupply the SPR to the detriment of the U.S.\u2019 economic and national security.\n\nIn January of this year, the DOE rejected bids from several producers to refill the SPR because the market rate for crude oil at the time was well above the administration\u2019s arbitrary fixed price. And again in mid-October, the DOE announced they would not refill the SPR at a competitive level, instead wanting to pay $79 a barrel when the current market price is about $86 a barrel.\n\nThe misaligned economics of this system is straightforward \u2013 if producers get a better rate in the market than what DOE is prepared to pay, the SPR will remain at record lows \u2013 making our nation less safe and prepared.\n\nI\u2019ve offered legislation \u2013 the Strategic Petroleum Reserve Replenishment Act \u2013 in this Congress and the last that would correct this issue. The House also passed a similar amendment I introduced that was included in H.R. 1 \u2013 the Lower Energy Costs Act. It would require DOE to use index-based pricing when accepting bids for the SPR. This method will ensure that DOE accepts bids at the market rate for crude oil rather than Biden\u2019s price-fixing scheme. Unfortunately, the Democrat-led Senate has yet to take action on the bill.\n\nOur world is less safe today than in January 2021, and we are less prepared to withstand foreign adversaries using oil as leverage. Biden should have never put our national defense in jeopardy just to try and eke out a few more midterm votes. Now that it\u2019s depleted, his administration should really be working to replenish the Strategic Petroleum Reserve \u2013 back to where it was on January 20, 2021, when a full SPR provided us with extra protection and a full tank of gas was $20 bucks cheaper.", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-08T01:01:09Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://estes.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=4221"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.411036752164364, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}