Bice begins her second Congressional term as a conservative troll

Last Updated on August 6, 2023, 2:50 AM | Published: January 22, 2023

In the first week of her second term as representative of the freshly gerrymandered Fifth Congressional District of Oklahoma, Stephanie Bice proved she is not representing Oklahoma City in her legislation.

On Jan. 9, Bice reintroduced the Save America’s Valuable Energy (SAVE) Act, HR 59. On its surface, this looks like actual business, because “Oklahoma runs on petroleum,” right?

Actually, it is just a shady ideological leftover from mid-2022, when Republicans were screaming about high gas prices that were ginned up to affect the 2022 elections. 

It is so not-nice, Bice is trying it twice.

Republicans who think like Bice — U.S. Sen. James Lankford comes to mind — complain no matter what Biden does. Gas prices are high? “Biden needs to do something about it!” Biden opens the Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR) to lower prices? “Oh, no – you can’t do that!”

Last summer, Bice originally authored the SAVE Act in response to the U.S. Department of Energy’s April 2022 decision to sell 30 million barrels from the SPR. In an April 21 press release, DoE announced it was doing so “to address [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s price hike at the pump and to establish true energy independence and lower costs for Americans into the future.”

Gas prices rose sharply in early 2022 as a knock-on result of U.S. and European Union sanctions placed against Russia for its Feb. 24, 2022 invasion of Ukraine. This drove crude prices north of $100 per barrel. 

In response, an Oklahoma-based company going to bat for Putin began selling stickers and other paraphernalia attacking Biden for the gas prices. That company, ironically called The Patriotic Products, sold those “I Did That” stickers that appeared on gas pumps next to the digital price indicators.

That company also sells stickers that say things like “Trump 2024: Make Affordable Gas Again” as well as “Patriot Vaccination Cards” (card stock, 5 for $5.95) and a “White Privilege Card”  (plastic, 1 for $8.95) that literally does nothing except provide a wallet-borne prop for your racist uncle to use next Thanksgiving. 

The 30 million barrels from the SPR were sold to 12 companies, with the largest amounts going to:

• Valero (6.85 million),
• Motiva Enterprises (owned by Shell and Saudi Aramco, 4.05 million),
• ExxonMobil (3.6 million), and an additional 2.75 million to
• Shell Trading (2.75 million).

However, Bice zeroed in on the second-to-smallest buyer, Unipec America, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chinese government-run petrochemical company Sinopec. Unipec America, whose offices are in Houston, bought 950,000 barrels. 

Now, if I were going to be pissed at the Biden Administration, it would be because it sold 4.05 million barrels to a company that, three weeks after the purchase, became the most valuable corporation in the world, surpassing Apple, and resides in an actual state sponsor of terrorism. But Bice did not mention that. She focused entirely on China – former President Donald Trump’s favorite country to blame. 

In contrast, the U.S. legally does business with China. Yes, there is a trade imbalance, but 950,000 barrels did not move the needle so much. 

Bice took to her role as a member of the Trump zombie horde like a horse takes to surfing. 

“Instead of fixing the problem and restoring American energy production, Biden has chosen to tap into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for the fifth time,” Bice said in a July 2022 statement. “The SPR is supposed to be used for emergencies and major weather events, not as a bandage to stop the bleeding from his self-inflicted crisis. To make matters worse, in April, Biden sent 950,000 barrels from the SPR to China. My legislation closes this loophole and ensures that in the future, we do not send a single barrel of American crude oil to our adversaries.” 

Bice is pretty much wrong on all of this, including the part about her bill closing “this loophole.” The SAVE Act is a resolution – it does not carry the weight of law. 

The SPR was established in 1975 in response to the 1973-74 OPEC oil embargo – a human-engineered event. The first “test sale” from the SPR was done in 1985 under former President Ronald Reagan. According to DoE’s website, the SPR “exists, first and foremost, as an emergency response tool the President can use should the United States be confronted with an economically-threatening disruption in oil supplies.”

Every president since Reagan has sold from the SPR to alleviate potential losses from ship channel closures, hurricanes and, in the case of Operation Desert Shield, wars. Now, she is reintroducing the SAVE.

So, Bice did help one Oklahoma company , but it was one that sells insanely expensive paper products for use by conservative trolls. 

Trolls, it seems, stick together.

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