Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate candidates, incumbent Democrat Bob Casey and Republican Dave McCormick, are jockeying to point out they’re robust on China, whether or not it’s about investments, donations or votes.
In an advert launched Aug. 25, McCormick’s marketing campaign listed Casey’s purported ties to China. Among the many claims: Casey “even voted to promote American oil to China.”
President Joe Biden’s administration offered oil to a Chinese language state-owned firm in 2022, as half of a giant Strategic Petroleum Reserve drawdown. However the Senate by no means voted on these gross sales. Casey voted no on a procedural vote about whether or not to contemplate an modification that will have restricted international exports of oil from the reserve. He later voted in favor of comparable limits.
The McCormick advert cites a July 2022 article from the conservative Washington Free Beacon, which particulars the Biden administration’s sale of oil to Unipec America. China Petrochemical Corp., generally generally known as Sinopec, the biggest state-owned oil firm in China, owns Unipec.
The federal Vitality Division offered at the least 180 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve all through 2022 to fight excessive gasoline costs exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The oil gross sales adopted a aggressive bidding course of required by regulation. In April and July of that 12 months, the administration offered a collective 1.9 million barrels of oil to Unipec.
The Strategic Petroleum Reserves gross sales have been government actions that required no Senate motion. So, Casey didn’t vote on them.
Senate voted to limit oil exports to China
When contacted for remark, the McCormick marketing campaign pointed to an August 2022 Senate vote on whether or not to contemplate an modification that will have blocked the sale of American oil reserves for export to China. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, supplied the modification to the Democratic-backed Inflation Discount Act.
The Senate voted on whether or not to contemplate Cruz’s modification. The movement to contemplate, which required 60 votes to go, failed with a 54-46 vote. 4 Democrats joined Republicans to vote in favor of contemplating the modification, however Casey was not amongst them.
Reporting on the “vote-a-rama” on the time, Roll Name stated Democrats used the process so its celebration members who confronted aggressive elections might “present their assist for the underlying modification” with out it being added to the invoice.
Casey’s marketing campaign, when reached for remark, stated Casey’s nay vote was for a procedural measure — the movement to contemplate — not the modification itself.
A 12 months later, when Cruz proposed an identical modification to the Nationwide Protection Authorization Act for fiscal 12 months 2024, Casey joined most Democrats in voting in favor of it. The modification handed on an 85-14 vote, however the provision was stripped within the invoice that the Home and Senate agreed to and that Biden signed into regulation.
This 12 months, Casey co-sponsored a invoice fellow Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman launched that additionally would restrict oil exports from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It might ban gross sales from the reserve to China, North Korea, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Syria, Cuba or “any entity owned, managed or influenced” by any of these international locations or the Chinese language Communist Get together. The vitality secretary might subject a waiver to permit gross sales that have been deemed within the curiosity of nationwide safety.
The Senate referred the invoice to the Committee on Vitality and Pure Sources, but it surely obtained no additional motion.
Petroleum reserve is a part of a worldwide market
The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve is an emergency provide of crude oil used to stabilize oil costs within the U.S. throughout crises.
Responding to hovering gasoline costs after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Biden introduced a plan to draw down and promote 180 million barrels of oil from the reserve. Republicans accused Biden of tapping the reserves to decrease gasoline costs in an election 12 months.
By regulation, the petroleum reserves should be offered via a aggressive bidding course of, and the sale goes to the best bidders. The oil typically goes to foreign-owned corporations, so long as the federal authorities authorizes them and so they function within the U.S., stated Hugh Daigle, a College of Texas at Austin affiliate professor within the Division of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering.
Promoting to an American firm doesn’t assure that oil stays within the U.S., Daigle stated.
Oil corporations purchase and promote on a worldwide market, and an American firm is simply as possible as a international firm to export its oil to China, he stated. There’s additionally no document of the oil offered to Unipec being exported to China, he stated, as a result of the U.S. doesn’t observe the oil after it leaves the reserve.
“It may be actually tough even to maintain observe of the place that particular oil goes,” Daigle stated. “It may be combined with different oil in a crude tanker. Except you’re monitoring particular person molecules it may be extremely tough to confirm that no strategic petroleum reserve oil has ever gone to China.”
Our ruling
A McCormick marketing campaign advert stated Casey “voted to promote American oil to China.”
Casey by no means participated in a Senate vote that led to the sale of American oil to China. Gross sales from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to a Chinese language-owned firm in 2022 have been an government motion that required no Senate vote.
Casey voted in opposition to a procedural measure that will have allowed consideration of an modification to ban exports of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to China. He later voted in favor of an identical modification, and backed a invoice with stricter limits on Strategic Petroleum Reserve gross sales this 12 months.
We charge the assertion False.