WASHINGTON — The U.S. Home of Representatives handed a invoice Friday aimed toward limiting the president’s capability to attract down the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve for any motive apart from a “extreme vitality provide disruption.”

The legislation is supposed to forestall a repeat of President Joe Biden’s quite a few withdrawals from the SPR in 2022 that Republicans contend have been supposed to decrease client fuel costs forward of the midterm elections

The invoice handed on a close to party-line vote, 221-205, after greater than six hours of particular person Home votes on varied proposed amendments.

Titled the Strategic Manufacturing Response Act, the laws handed Friday would prohibit any new drawdowns on the SPR till federal businesses had developed a plan to lease federal lands for oil and fuel manufacturing “by the identical proportion as the proportion of petroleum … that’s to be drawn down,” in line with the invoice’s textual content.

Regardless of passing the Home, the laws is all however sure by no means to be signed into legislation. It lacks the help to cross the Democratic-controlled Senate and the White Home has stated Biden will veto it if it ever involves his desk.

Days earlier than the vote, Vitality Secretary Jennifer Granholm stated at a White Home press briefing that the invoice “would impose pointless, unhelpful restrictions on when the SPR can be utilized to assist present provide.”

“It might not provide any tangible advantages to the American individuals,” Granholm instructed reporters. “As a substitute, it might intervene with our capability to be responsive throughout a global emergency … a pure catastrophe or a pipeline outage at residence.”

The White Home has lengthy argued that the releases from the SPR prior to now 12 months have been essential to offset the surge in pump costs sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

However Republicans counter that the scale of the general 2022 launch, 180 million barrels, was extreme, and that particular person releases and bulletins about future releases have been timed for max political profit for Democrats.

During the last 12 months, the full oil within the reserve shrunk to about 380 million barrels, its lowest since 1984, raising concerns about energy security.

When Biden took workplace in 2021, the SPR contained 638 million barrels.

Friday’s laws marked the second time that the GOP-controlled Home has handed a invoice associated to the SPR. The primary one prohibited the sale of petroleum reserves to Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. It handed with bipartisan help.

Following Friday’s passage, the invoice’s chief sponsor, Home Vitality and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, applauded the vote.

“President Biden has turned a longtime bipartisan strategic asset, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, right into a political software to cowl up the results of his costly rush-to-green agenda,” she stated in a press release.

The laws “gives a path in the direction of making vitality extra inexpensive and dependable for People by preserving the SPR’s important and central objective — to supply the oil provides People want throughout true emergencies, not drain them away for non-emergency, political functions,” she added.