House Republicans want answers about oil sale to Hunter Biden-linked China company
Republicans on the House Oversight Committee sent a letter to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on Wednesday demanding to know why the Biden administration sold oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to a Chinese company linked to Hunter Biden’s investment firm.
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the top GOP member on the panel, and 18 of his colleagues are questioning why the Department of Energy exported 900,000 barrels of oil to Unipec America — a subsidiary of Sinopec, a Chinese-owned gas company that received billions of dollars from an investment firm connected to the disgraced first son.
“The decision to sell to Unipec raises questions about why the Biden Administration is selling oil from the SPR to China, especially when the sale may enrich Hunter Biden, the President’s son,” the letter says.
“This transaction is even more troubling given that evidence continues to mount showing the Biden family peddled access to the highest levels of government to enrich themselves,” added Comer.
The GOP members went on to request a briefing from the Energy Department and documents related to the sale: “[T]o ensure the American people that DOE and the Biden Administration are properly managing the sale of critical assets from the SPR and not further enriching the Biden family, we request a briefing and documents related to this matter.”
In a statement to The Post, Comer said “under no circumstances should the Department of Energy be making decisions which financially benefit Hunter Biden or any of the Biden family’s business partners.”
He also warned that if the White House continues to defy its requests, the panel would make more forceful demands if Republicans take back the House of Representatives in the fall midterm elections.
“If Administration officials continue to ignore meaningful oversight, you can rest assured we’ll use the gavel to get answers in January,” Comer said.
The letter cites DOE records from April showing that nearly $100 million worth of oil was sold to Unipec and claims that documents reviewed by GOP members of the committee indicate that the equity fund BHR invested $1.7 billion in Sinopec in 2015.
“It appears that Hunter Biden still maintains a financial interest in BHR, raising serious questions about the motivation behind selling oil from the SPR to Sinopec and whether DOE was aware of Hunter Biden’s financial stake,” the letter to the DOE says.
The Post reported in April that Hunter Biden created BHR Partners in 2013 with Chinese businessman Jonathan Li.
Hunter Biden’s extensive network of business relationships in China has been the subject of a number of exclusives published by The Post, building on a series of exposes from October 2020 based on information found on the hard drive of a laptop the scandal-scarred first son abandoned at a computer repair shop in Delaware.
Chris Clark, a lawyer for Hunter Biden, told the New York Times in 2021 that the president’s son “no longer holds any interest, directly or indirectly,” in BHR.
But a report in the Washington Examiner this March said Chinese and American business records show that Hunter Biden remains a 10% owner of BHR.
The DOE announced in April that it was exporting 30 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserves to 12 companies that had bid for the purchases, including Unipec American, which got nearly 1 million barrels.
The administration had tapped into the SPR in the hopes of combating high gas prices in the US and to help bring down prices on the global market that had spiked after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine choked off much of the world’s supply.
“The SPR was created so the US would have a stockpile of crude oil supply to be used in
the case of an emergency. It was never intended to provide oil to adversaries such as China,” the letter says.
A number of other companies based around the world — including in Norway, France, the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia — also received oil in the sale.
For example, Phillips 66, the fourth-largest oil refiner in the US, shipped some 470,000 barrels of the 2.5 million barrels of oil it received to Trieste, Italy.
The GOP lawmakers on the committee said they requested a staff-level briefing on May 26 about the “DOE’s decision to deplete the SPR,” but it never took place.
“We reiterate our prior request and ask that you immediately schedule this briefing so
that we can better understand how DOE decided to sell oil to a Chinese company with
connections to the President’s son,” the letter says.
The Republicans are also seeking documents and communications about the sale of oil to Unipec dated since Biden’s inauguration, as well as material from the same period relating to Hunter Biden or BHR Partners.
The Republicans who joined Comer in signing the letter include Reps. Jody Hice of Georgia, Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin, Michael Cloud of Texas, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, Bob Gibbs of Ohio, Clay Higgins of Louisiana, Pete Sessions of Texas, Fred Keller of Pennsylvania, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Scott Franklin of Florida, Jake LaTurner of Kansas, Pat Fallon of Texas, Yvette Herrell of New Mexico, Byron Donalds of Florida, and Mike Flood of Nebraska.
The Department of Energy did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
