Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate candidates, incumbent Democrat Bob Casey and Republican Dave McCormick, are vying to take a tough stance against China, whether it’s investments, donations or votes.
In an August 25 ad, McCormick’s campaign listed Casey’s alleged ties to China, including claiming that Casey “even voted to sell American oil to China.”
President Joe Biden’s administration sold oil to a Chinese state-owned company in 2022 as part of a major reduction in strategic oil reserves. But the Senate never voted on those sales. Casey voted no on a procedural vote on whether to consider an amendment that would have limited foreign oil exports from the reserve. He later voted for similar restrictions.
The McCormick ad cites a July 2022 article from the conservative Washington Free Beacon detailing the Biden administration’s oil sale to Unipec America. Unipec is owned by China Petrochemical Corp., commonly known as Sinopec, China’s largest state-owned oil company.
The U.S. Department of Energy sold at least 180 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Oil Reserve in 2022 to counter high gasoline prices exacerbated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The oil sales were made through a legally mandated competitive bidding process. In April and July of the same year, the government sold a total of 1.9 million barrels of oil to Unipec.
The sale of the strategic oil reserves was an executive action that did not require a vote by the Senate, so Casey did not vote on it.
Senate voted to restrict oil exports to China
When asked for comment, the McCormick team referred to a Senate vote in August 2022 on whether to consider an amendment that would have blocked the sale of American oil reserves for export to China. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) proposed the amendment to the Democratic-backed Inflation Control Act.
The Senate voted on whether to consider Cruz’s amendment. The motion, which required 60 votes to pass, was defeated by a vote of 54 to 46. Four Democrats joined Republicans in voting to consider the amendment, but Casey was not among them.
Roll Call reported on the “vote-a-rama” exercise at the time, saying that Democrats used the process to allow their party members who were up for election to “show their support for the underlying amendment” without it being included in the bill.
When asked for comment, Casey’s campaign team said Casey’s no vote was on a procedural measure – the motion for review – and not on the amendment itself.
A year later, when Cruz proposed a similar amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2024, Casey voted for it along with most Democrats. The amendment passed by a vote of 85 to 14, but the provision was removed from the bill that the House and Senate approved and Biden signed.
This year, Casey co-sponsored a bill introduced by fellow Democrat John Fetterman of Pennsylvania that would also restrict oil exports from the Strategic Oil Reserve. It would prohibit sales from the reserve to China, North Korea, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Syria, Cuba, or “any entity owned, controlled, or influenced” by any of those countries or the Chinese Communist Party. The Energy Secretary could grant an exemption to allow sales that are in the interest of national security.
The Senate referred the bill to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, which took no further action.
Oil reserves are part of a global market
The U.S. Strategic Oil Reserve is an emergency stockpile of crude oil that serves to stabilize the price of oil in the United States in times of crisis.
In response to rising gasoline prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Biden announced a plan to take 180 million barrels of oil from the reserve and sell it. Republicans accused Biden of tapping the reserves to lower gasoline prices in an election year.
By law, oil reserves must be sold through a competitive bidding process, with the highest bidder winning. The oil sometimes goes to foreign companies, as long as they get federal approval and operate in the United States, says Hugh Daigle, an associate professor in the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.
The sale to an American company is no guarantee that the oil will stay in the United States, Daigle said.
Oil companies buy and sell on the global market, and an American company is just as likely to export its oil to China as a foreign one, he said. There is also no record of the oil sold to Unipec being exported to China, he said, because the U.S. does not track the oil after it leaves the reserve.
“It can be really difficult to even track where that particular oil goes,” Daigle said. “It can get mixed in with other oil in a crude tanker. Unless you track individual molecules, it can be incredibly difficult to verify that any oil from strategic petroleum reserves ever made it to China.”
Our verdict
A McCormick campaign ad said Casey “voted for the sale of American oil to China.”
Casey never participated in a Senate vote that led to the sale of American oil to China. The sale of oil from the Strategic Oil Reserve to a Chinese company in 2022 was an executive action that did not require a Senate vote.
Casey voted against a procedural measure that would have allowed consideration of an amendment to ban the export of oil from the Strategic Oil Reserve to China. He later voted for a similar amendment and supported a bill with tighter restrictions on the sale of oil from the Strategic Oil Reserve this year.
We rate the statement as false.
