Many elected members of the United States Congress urged Joe Biden on Thursday to ban the import by the United States of Russian oil in response to the invasion of Ukraine, which the White House has so far refused to do. make.
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“The United States should not subsidize Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine by buying and importing Russian oil,” West Virginia Senator Shelley Moore Capito said.
She is part of a group of senators, Republicans and Democrats, who presented a bill in the afternoon that aims to ban these imports. Many of them represent US states known for their oil production.
Joe Biden said Wednesday that “nothing was ruled out” on the possibility of stopping these imports. But the White House has at the same time warned against the risks associated with such a decision, such as the surge in the price of black gold, which it could penalize American consumers.
“Our goal here is that every step (in the response) we take has maximum impact on President Putin and minimum consequences on the American people,” his spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said Thursday.
The group of elected congressmen, however, received the support of the powerful Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.
“I’m all for it, ban it,” she said at a press conference Thursday morning.
It would certainly be a symbolically strong sanction, but a priori without insurmountable consequences for the United States, themselves major oil producers and which do not rely much on Russia in this area.
Even without a barrage of Russian hydrocarbon sanctions so far, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has already pushed oil prices to their highest in more than a decade, while the gas reached new records.