Daniel Day-Lewis gave a masterful performance as the maniacal oilman, Daniel Plainview, in 2007’s There Will Be Blood. In one of the final scenes, Plainview reveals the worthless nature of a contested piece of property owned by his nemesis, Eli Sunday, played by Paul Dano, by demonstrating in a drunken rage how he had put a straw into neighboring plots of land he already owned, aaaaaaaaaaaall the way across the room, and drank Eli’s milkshake. He drank it up. It’s a wonderfully terrifying scene.
We’ve seen our Strategic Petroleum Reserve dwindle ever since Joe Biden took office, beginning in earnest when inflation hit. Gas prices soared to their highest levels ever seen in the United States, with some stations in Los Angeles topping $8 dollars a gallon. The national average for unleaded peaked on June 14, 2022, at $5.04 a gallon. What follows is a timeline that’s been revealed over the weekend of how China played the role of Daniel Plainview, and drank our milkshake. And Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm provided the straw.
In 2007, China announced a four-phase plan to increase their oil reserve capacity, with the stated goal then of holding a 90-day supply by the year 2020.
In 2013, Hunter Biden joined his father, Joe, aboard Air Force 2 on a trip to China, and within weeks, created the investment firm BHR Partners, which invested a 10% stake into Sinopec Marketing. The then-CEO of BHR Partners, Jonathan Li, was introduced to Vice President Biden in a hotel lobby by Hunter. The New York Post had a story on that in October of 2022.
When questioned about that financial conflict of interest, an attorney for Hunter Biden said he no longer retains that investment, that it has been fully divested. Except there’s no record either in the United States or in China of that divestment actually happening.
In 2021, a perfect storm of pent-up demand after the COVID lockdown was subsiding, no increase in gasoline refining capacity, and further industrialization taking place in China and India affecting the global demand for oil, along with the Biden administration wallpapering the country with COVID relief money that wasn’t necessary in an already-recovering economy, caused gas prices at the pump to skyrocket. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm knew there was a growing problem by October, 2021. Gasoline had already risen by a dollar a gallon just since Biden took office nine months prior, and there was no end in sight to the steady increase at the pump. She did not want to talk about increasing domestic energy production, though. She was too focused on transitioning to electric vehicles, which would benefit a company she had a financial stake in, Proterra, immensely. Here she is on October 18, 2021, to ABC News.
We have no moral authority, she says, to talk to China about their fossil fuel use contributing to climate change. We’re bad guys, too, she intimates. China comes in right around 30% of global emissions on carbon, if that’s your thing. The U.S. is less than half that and falling. China’s percentage is the highest and growing. But she’s willing to put all that aside and is specifically going out of her way not to call out China.
Two weeks later, November 5th of 2021, Secretary Granholm literally laughs out loud on Bloomberg News at the idea of the U.S. ramping up oil production.
Keep in mind, in this last two weeks alone, gasoline has risen another 20 cents at the pump. Food prices have jumped. Everything bought by Americans that’s either shipped here, railed across the country, and/or trucked to the store they bought it at has had to hike their prices as every step in the production chain tries to compensate for rising fuel costs. She laughs.
Fox News reported over the weekend that on November 19th, and again two days later on the 21st, Granholm met with the CCP’s top energy official at Sinopec (keep in mind Hunter’s still not able to demonstrate he’s divested from Sinopec investments), prior to the White House announcing they were going to begin draining the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Before the release. Meaning the CCP likely was given the heads-up that we were going to put oil onto the open market, giving the CCP insider information in order to put their bids together before anyone else could react.
The United States called on China, along with other global powers, to simultaneously release oil to combat the supply/demand imbalance. China kept the oil they bought from us and stored it instead of releasing it.
Voices on both sides of the aisle in both chambers of Congress weren’t too happy about the optics of China buying the oil we’re supposed to be stockpiling for emergencies, when it was apparent the oil being released wasn’t being used to make gasoline here. Karine Jean-Pierre on January 23rd, 2002, upon growing rumbling that the House, if it changes hands into the Republicans, would ban SPR oil sales to China, said it was a non-issue.
We now know from the Fox News story over the weekend that it wasn’t a non-issue. It very much was and is an issue.
Two months later, March 10th, 2022, Granholm was still publicly praising China for all the work they were doing. Keep in mind, China is doing nothing on climate change. They’re compounding the problem by adding coal-fired power plants monthly. They’re not cooperating with the rest of the global community to do something to reduce demand and increase supply of oil. They’re hoarding what they’re not using. And yet, Granholm is still genuflecting to the CCP overlords.
Two months later in the United States Senate, Tennessee Senator Bill Hagerty begins to put two and two together – Granholm playing footsie with the CCP on oil sales, and the history of Hunter Biden literally creating an investment group with a financial stake in CCP oil transactions, and asked her if she knew Hunter. Watch the body language.
I’d love to see a return visit in front of Senator Hagerty now that we know she was directly negotiating with the CCP ahead of the announce of the SPR release. I’d love to see her grilled and redirected after she spins, on how much influence and pressure she received from Biden, Inc. to benefit Hunter’s (and eventually Joe’s) business concerns. After all, 10% goes to the Big Guy.
A year after her clandestine negotiations with the CCP, Granholm was back on CNN to say the continued draining of the SPR was because of Putin’s war in Ukraine.
Sorry, not taking anything she says at face value anymore. She negotiated insider trading of oil that shouldn’t have been for sale in the first place to our biggest geopolitical foe. Either she did that on her own, in which case she should be prosecuted, or she did it on behalf of, or at the direction of, her boss.
Oh, by the way, the whole statutory requirement of refilling the drained SPR? She promised on that same CNN interview it would happen, of course.
Guess what hasn’t happened, yet? The SPR has a capacity of 700-plus million barrels of oil. When Biden took office, it was comfortably in the 600-plus million barrel range. It’s in the mid-300s now, with no plan in place to replace it. And why should there be? The replacement cost now compared to what it was when it reached near capacity under Donald Trump is astronomically higher now. It will cost a bloody fortune.
