Senator Hassan Statement on Sanctioning Russian Oil and Gas

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan (D-NH) released the below statement after President Biden today announced that the U.S. is sanctioning Russian oil and gas. Senator Hassan previously called for this and cosponsored legislation to take this step.

“Banning Russian oil and gas imports is an important part of our broader efforts to deliver crippling consequences to Putin for his unconscionable invasion of Ukraine. I supported these sanctions along with a bipartisan group of my colleagues, and with President Biden’s announcement today, we continue to send an unwavering, bipartisan message that we will not tolerate Putin’s actions,” said Senator Hassan. “In addition, I continue to urge the administration to take steps to mitigate the impact of these sanctions on consumers, including by cracking down on any manipulation of the market by Big Oil and supporting commonsense measures like suspending the gas tax for 2022 so that families feel less pain at the pump.”

In addition to supporting these oil and gas sanctions and additional economic sanctions, Senator Hassan introduced a bipartisan resolution with Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) to designate Vladimir Putin as a war criminal for his crimes against the Ukrainian people. Senator Hassan is also working across the aisle to bring down energy costs for Granite Staters, including by standing up to Big Oil by working to prevent companies from taking advantage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to manipulate oil and gas prices. Senator Hassan also recently introduced legislation to lower high gas prices by temporarily suspending the federal gas tax through the end of the year. Additionally, Senator Hassan successfully called on the Biden administration to take action last week to help lower energy costs by releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The Senator previously led an effort urging the administration to release oil from the Reserve last November, which the administration subsequently did.

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