Exclusive — Randy Weber: Biden’s ‘War on Fossil Fuels’ Makes America Dependent on the Rest of the World

Rep. Randy Weber (R-TX) is raising an alarm on the Biden administration selling crude oil from America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is at its lowest inventory level in nearly four decades years.

Weber, whose district houses roughly 60 percent of the nation’s emergency crude oil stockpile, told host Matthew Boyle on Breitbart News Saturday he has found President Joe Biden to be “anything but moderate” when it comes to the critical fossil fuel.

“The president has a war on fossil fuels. Don’t let him fool you that he’s going to be moderate,” Weber said, citing Biden revoking the Keystone XL pipeline’s permit, one of the president’s first moves when he took office in January 2021.

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“[Biden] has killed permitting,” Weber said. “There’s a lot of these woke corporations that don’t want to lend money now to be investment money for some of these drillings and some of these plants that need to be built, so he has effectively really done a number on fossil fuel since he’s been in office two years.”

Weber wrote an op-ed last week warning of the Biden administration’s “reckless depletion” of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and condemning what he described as the president’s “all-out assault on American energy.”

Biden announced in March he would release one million barrels of reserves per day for six months to sell to eligible companies in response to what he called “Putin’s price hike,” suggesting gas prices in the United States went up because of Russian President Vladimir Putin leading an invasion of Ukraine in February.

The Biden administration began attributing high gas prices, which reached an all-time record high of an average of $5 per gallon in June, soon after the February invasion, despite federal data showing gas prices under Biden were already well on the rise prior to it.

While gas prices have dipped some over the summer, they remain relatively high at an average of $3.95 per gallon.

Weber countered that in selling off Strategic Petroleum Preserves, “you think you can reduce fuel prices and maybe Americans will be happier with you? Because that’s very temporary. How are we going to get the SPR rebuilt again? How are we going to have enough energy to do the things we need?”

The emergency oil barrels being released into the market are being bought up by the highest bidding registered companies, including U.S. subsidiaries of companies in China, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere, as detailed by FactCheck.org. The added supply at the global level is intended to ultimately lower U.S. gas prices, which are, at present, largely dependent on global oil supply and demand.

Weber indicated that the dramatic reduction in America’s emergency supply of crude oil is less about relieving gas prices and more about Biden’s “green” posture, and the president’s heavy focus on moving the country away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy sources.

“They’re trying to change the dialogue, and we’re saying no. This is about America, Americans,” Weber said. “This is about inflation. This is about people who are tired of the fossil fuel war, where you’re trying to make us dependent on the rest of the world.”

Write to Ashley Oliver at aoliver@breitbart.com. Follow her on Twitter at @asholiver.