The US considers options to reduce its consumption of Russian energy

United States assured that it is considering options to reduce its consumption of Russian energy, in the face of growing pressure from the US Congress for Washington to stop importing oil from Russia.

“We are looking at options we can take right now to reduce US consumption of Russian energy,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

The spokeswoman clarified, however, that if “supply in the global market is reduced, gasoline prices will rise”, which are already high in themselves, and that is why the White House wants to do everything possible to “minimize the impact on American families.

The president of the United States, Joe Biden, affirmed this week that vetoing US imports of Russian oil is one of the options that his government is considering, although Psaki lowered expectations in this regard on Thursday.

Cecilia Rouse, Biden’s economic adviser, stressed this Friday in statements to the press that the priority of the White House is “to keep the global energy supply stable.”

The reluctance of the White House to adopt this measure has generated tension with legislators in Congress, where members of both parties – including the president of the House of Representatives, Democrat Nancy Pelosi – have advocated vetoing imports.

This Thursday, a bipartisan group of legislators presented a bill to veto imports of crude oil and products derived from Russia, as well as liquefied gas and coal.

And Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, one of the most conservative in the party and whose vote is crucial to approving Biden’s priorities, criticized the White House’s position on Thursday, saying that Washington can offset the impact of that veto on imports. with higher domestic production.

The United States has the capacity to produce its own gas and oil thanks to hydraulic fracturing and other forms of extraction, although it continues to import energy from other countries because its domestic consumption is much greater than domestic production.

Compared to the European Union (EU), however, the United States is much less dependent on Russia and only imports 7.9% of its oil from that country, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). ).

However, oil prices have already risen in the United States due to the refusal of some refiners to buy crude from Russia, fearing US sanctions, in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.