Biden bans Russian oil and gasoline imports after bipartisan stress

President Biden introduced a ban on Russian power imports Tuesday after a bipartisan coalition in Congress threatened to pressure his hand to punish Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Today I’m announcing the United States is targeting the main artery of Russia’s economy. We’re banning all imports of Russian oil and gas and energy,” Biden stated in remarks from the White House Roosevelt Room.

“Russian oil will no longer be acceptable at US ports and the American people will deal another powerful blow to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s war machine.” 

“This is a step that we’re taking to inflict further pain on Putin, but there will be costs as well here in the United States,” Biden warned as US gasoline costs hit an all-time excessive of $4.17 per gallon on common.

The president, talking earlier than a visit to Fort Worth, Texas to debate veteran healthcare, additionally defended his personal power insurance policies, which Republicans say contributed to rising gasoline prices.

“It’s simply not true that my administration or policies are holding back domestic energy production, that’s simply not true,” stated Biden, who canceled development of the Keystone XL oil pipeline final 12 months and tried to halt new drilling permits on public land.

“We’re approaching record levels of oil and gas production in the United States and we’re on track to set a record for production next year … The oil and gas industry has millions of acres leased. They have 9,000 permits to drill now. They could be drilling right now, yesterday, last week, last year.”

Biden then admonished oil firms, saying there was “no excuse to exercise excessive price increases or padding profits or any kind of effort to exploit the situation.”

The president’s insistence that his personal insurance policies weren’t “holding back domestic energy production” drew swift GOP pushback.

Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.) tweeted, “@POTUS this you?” with a hyperlink to Biden’s 2021 government order that sought to curtail new oil exploration.

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt tweeted, “Joe Biden is lying — although I won’t hold my breath for ‘fact checkers’ to correct him.” Schmitt urged Biden to take quite a lot of steps to spice up home manufacturing, together with permitting pipeline development and new drilling.

In his speech, Biden additionally referred to as for additional growth of electrical automobiles — echoing Monday remarks from Vice President Kamala Harris that had been panned by Republicans for being “tone deaf.”

“Transforming our economy to run on electric vehicles powered by clean energy — with tax credits to help American families winterize their homes and use less energy — that will help and if we can and we do what we can, it will mean that no one has to worry about price of gas pump in the future,” Biden stated.

“That will mean tyrants like Putin won’t be able to use fossil fuels as weapons against other nations and it will make America a world leader in manufacturing and exporting clean energy technologies of the future, to countries all around the world.”

Biden took no questions from reporters and didn’t handle studies that his administration is searching for to cozy as much as the despotic leaders of Iran and Venezuela to alleviate potential international gasoline shortages.

Billionaire John Catsimatidis, who owns about 400 gasoline stations within the New York City space in addition to an oil refinery in western Pennsylvania, slammed Biden administration overtures to Venezuela.

“If we are going to buy from Venezuela instead of Russia, this is basically only a subsidiary of Russia,” Catsimatidis advised The Post. “If Russia is calling the shots on Venezuela, and Russia and Saudi Arabia are working in concert, we are still making foreign countries rich and American people poorer. We must have an alliance between Mexico, Canada, and the United States as the North American Energy Alliance.”

The White House introduced the speech shortly after reporting emerged that Biden frantically referred to as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) Monday night time to plead together with her to desk laws to pressure an import ban.

An administration staffer referred to as Pelosi’s workplace at round 6:30 p.m. Monday and urged her to cease the House Ways and Means Committee from advancing a invoice to ban Russian oil, Jacqui Heinrich of Fox News reported.

Pelosi was “not moved by their arguments,” a supply advised Heinrich, and “told the WH staff they would be pushing ahead – so around 9:30 last night President Biden himself called Pelosi and asked her not to do it,” however once more did not sway her.

Spokespeople for Pelosi and the White House didn’t instantly reply to requests for touch upon the speaker’s reported snub of Biden.

It’s the third time that Biden resisted a significant set of sanctions in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion — solely to undertake them in response to bipartisan stress.

As just lately as Monday afternoon, White House press secretary Jen Psaki was telling White House reporters that “no decision has been made at this point by the president” about an import ban.

Biden initially introduced restricted sanctions in opposition to state-owned Russian banks and sure Russian businessmen when tanks rolled throughout Ukraine’s borders on Feb, 24. After criticism, Biden sanctioned Putin’s huge private wealth and reached an settlement with US allies to partially unplug Russia from the SWIFT worldwide banking system.

Pelosi final week endorsed an oil import ban invoice pushed by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) — all however guaranteeing it had sufficient assist to sail by way of Congress.

Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY), who helped lead the House push to ban Russian oil, advised The Post it was “the right thing to do” and that “we all have to pull together to stop this madman,” referring to Putin.

Meanwhile, the highest Democrats and Republicans on House and Senate committees that oversee commerce introduced laws Monday that may each bar Russian power imports and droop regular commerce with Moscow and its shut ally Belarus.

In what might function a face-saving measure for Biden and a possible cudgel in opposition to Republicans, the House is anticipated to vote Tuesday afternoon on a invoice that may successfully endorse Biden’s government order, which additionally forbids the importation of coal and pure gasoline from Russia and bans US funding in Russia’s power sector.

Biden acted after some Democrats expressed outrage that restrictions weren’t put in place earlier as Russia’s army moved to encircle Ukraine’s capital and largest metropolis, Kyiv, amid studies of great civilian casualties within the battle for the nation’s second-largest metropolis, Kharkiv.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) advised reporters Monday that the Senate ought to go laws this month to ban Russian imports.

“The sooner, the better,” Durbin said, including in reference to the White House: “I hope they come around to support the legislation.”

“It is so obviously apparent that we need to cut it off,” Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) told NBC News final week. “I wonder if there’s a reason we haven’t [and] what the hell the reason is.”

High gasoline costs usually are unhealthy information politically for leaders in energy and Republicans say Biden bears a few of the blame due to his actions to scrap pipeline tasks and search to curtail new drilling.

“Unleash AMERICAN energy,” Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) tweeted Tuesday.

But Psaki repeatedly tried to put the blame on oil firms for not drilling extra domestically and stated Monday that the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada into the US wouldn’t assist alleviate ache on the pump.

“The Keystone was not an oil field, it’s a pipeline. Also the oil is continuing to flow in, just through other means, so it actually would have nothing to do with the current supply imbalance,” she stated.

The US imported about 209,000 barrels of oil from Russia per day in 2021, about 3 % of its complete consumption, based on the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers.  The US imported 500,000 barrels per day of different petroleum merchandise from Russia, the affiliation stated.

NATO allies in Europe didn’t announce their very own bans Tuesday on Russian oil and pure gasoline, which comprise a bigger share of their home power consumption. Much of Europe’s gasoline provide traverses Ukrainian pipelines.

On Monday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz acknowledged that “Europe’s supply of energy for heat generation, mobility, power supply and industry cannot be secured in any other way” besides with Russian gasoline.

But British ambassador to the US Karen Pierce stated Tuesday morning that her nation might be part of the oil ban.

“The UK is in a different position because so little of our supplies actually come from Russia,” Pierce stated in a Fox News interview. “So we’re looking to see what we can do. The Germans have of course canceled [the] Nord Stream [2 natural gas pipeline from Russia] but for the reasons the chancellor has set out, they have a very different picture at home.”

The White House beforehand resisted reducing off Russian power by noting that it might trigger the worth of US gasoline to extend, in flip exacerbating already hovering inflation, which is at a 40-year excessive.