Did Pa. Sen. Bob Casey vote to sell American oil to China? That misconstrues the facts

Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate candidates, incumbent Democrat Bob Casey and Republican Dave McCormick, are jockeying to show they are tough on China, whether it’s about investments, donations or votes. 

In an ad released Aug. 25, McCormick’s campaign listed Casey’s purported ties to China. Among the claims: 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 large Strategic Petroleum Reserve drawdown. But the Senate never voted on those sales. Casey voted no on a procedural vote about whether to consider an amendment that would have limited foreign exports of oil from the reserve. He later voted in favor of similar limits.

The McCormick ad cites a July 2022 article from the conservative Washington Free Beacon, which details the Biden administration’s sale of oil to Unipec America. China Petrochemical Corp., commonly known as Sinopec, the largest state-owned oil company in China, owns Unipec. 

The federal Energy Department sold at least 180 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve throughout 2022 to combat high gasoline prices exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The oil sales followed a competitive bidding process required by law. In April and July of that year, the administration sold a collective 1.9 million barrels of oil to Unipec.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserves sales were executive actions that required no Senate action. So, Casey did not vote on them. 

When contacted for comment, the McCormick campaign pointed to an August 2022 Senate vote on whether to consider an amendment that would have blocked the sale of American oil reserves for export to China. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, offered the amendment to the Democratic-backed Inflation Reduction Act. 

The Senate voted on whether to consider Cruz’s amendment. The motion to consider, which required 60 votes to pass, failed with a 54-46 vote. Four Democrats joined Republicans to vote in favor of considering the amendment, but Casey was not among them. 

Reporting on the "vote-a-rama" at the time, Roll Call said Democrats used the procedure so its party members who faced competitive elections could "show their support for the underlying amendment" without it being added to the bill. 

Casey’s campaign, when reached for comment, said Casey’s nay vote was for a procedural measure — the motion to consider — not the amendment itself. 

A year later, when Cruz proposed a similar amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2024, Casey joined most Democrats in voting in favor of it. The amendment passed on an 85-14 vote, but the provision was stripped in the bill that the House and Senate agreed to and that Biden signed into law.

This year, Casey co-sponsored a bill fellow Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman introduced that also would limit oil exports from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It would ban 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 issue a waiver to allow sales that were deemed in the interest of national security.

The Senate referred the bill to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, but it received no further action. 

The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve is an emergency supply of crude oil used to stabilize oil prices in the U.S. during crises. 

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Responding to soaring gasoline prices after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Biden announced a plan to draw down and sell 180 million barrels of oil from the reserve. Republicans accused Biden of tapping the reserves to lower gasoline prices in an election year.

By law, the petroleum reserves must be sold through a competitive bidding process, and the sale goes to the highest bidders. The oil sometimes goes to foreign-owned companies, as long as the federal government authorizes them and they operate in the U.S., said Hugh Daigle, a University of Texas at Austin associate professor in the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering.

Selling to an American company doesn’t guarantee that oil stays in the U.S., Daigle said.

Oil companies buy and sell on a global market, and an American company is just as likely as a foreign company to export its oil to China, he said. There’s 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 even to keep track of where that specific oil goes," Daigle said. "It can be mixed with other oil in a crude tanker. Unless you’re tracking individual molecules it can be incredibly difficult to verify that no strategic petroleum reserve oil has ever gone to China." 

A McCormick campaign ad said Casey "voted to sell American oil to China." 

Casey never participated in a Senate vote that led to the sale of American oil to China. Sales from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to a Chinese-owned company in 2022 were an executive action that required no Senate vote. 

Casey voted against a procedural measure that would have allowed consideration of an amendment to ban exports of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to China. He later voted in favor of a similar amendment, and backed a bill with stricter limits on Strategic Petroleum Reserve sales this year. 

We rate the statement False.