Heinrich Welcomes White House Announcement On Russian Energy Imports Ban

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, welcomed President Joe Biden’s announcement today that the White House is taking steps to ban the import of Russian oil in response to the unprovoked and unjustified war in Ukraine.

“This is the right thing to do,” said Heinrich. “We cannot let energy profits finance Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked and unjustified war in Ukraine. In addition to banning imports of Russian oil, we also need to end the world’s dangerous long-term reliance on oil. For the sake of America’s national security, and for the sake of a healthy planet, we need to make urgent investments to scale up our manufacturing of fossil fuel-free technologies like heat pumps and electric vehicles and replace our current consumption of oil and fossil gas with clean and carbon pollution-free energy sources.”

Earlier this week, Senator Heinrich joined U.S. Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and U.S. Representatives Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) to introduce the bipartisan and bicameral Severing Putin’s Immense Gains from Oil Transfers (SPIGOT) Act, legislation that would prohibit the importation of Russian oil and petroleum products into the United States, and mandate a plan to replace those imports with alternative, clean sources of energy.

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