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BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey was on a video call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy along with hundreds of American lawmakers on Saturday.
Afterward, Markey held a press conference in which he proposed a ban on Russian oil, something he said the United States imported 245 million barrels of in the past year, more than 17 billion dollars' worth. Named the SPIGOT Act, which stands for "Severing Putin's Immense Gains from Oil Transfers," the ban was designed to stop the import of Russian oil into the U.S.
The senator said that one solution to avoid Russian oil is to go green, using electric energy instead.
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"An additional 16 million electric vehicles on the roads of the U.S would replace all of the oil that we import from Russia," Markey said. Markey went on to suggest that while the SPIGOT Act would be in place, the U.S could use its strategic oil reserve, which he said would last for a thousand days.
"We have to tell Putin we don't need Russian oil any more than we need Russian caviar," Markey said.
WBZ's Suzanne Sausville (@wbzSausville) reports.
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