Joe Biden pushed for fracking in Ukraine days after Hunter joined Burisma board

Joe Biden pushed for Ukraine to frack gas during his 2014 vice presidential visit – just days after his son Hunter joined the board of a firm set to profit from it.

The first son joined the board of allegedly corrupt Ukrainian gas firm Burisma on April 18, 2014, the company announced in a press release at the time. 

Three days later, Joe was aboard Air Force 2 for an official visit to the East European country.

One of his senior officials briefed reporters on the plane that the VP was pushing ‘medium- and long-term strategies to boost conventional gas production, and also to begin to take advantage of the unconventional gas reserves that are in Ukraine.’

The ‘unconventional’ reserves were a reference to fracking, a gas extraction method for which Burisma was one of the few firms in Ukraine to have a license at the time.

The official said Joe was also promising help for Ukrainian energy firms from US experts.

Biden’s push for greater energy production was politically significant – making Ukraine more economically independent from Russia. But, the move also led to millions of dollars for the company his son was then working for.

According to Burisma’s website, it ramped up production from 100million cubic meters in 2010 to 1.3 billion cubic meters in 2018 – when it generated revenues of at least $400million, according to a Reuters estimate.

In 2019 Burisma held 35 licenses for hydrocarbon production in Ukraine’s main oil and gas basins. 

According to energy industry publication KeyFactsEnergy.com it began using hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, in 2016 and by May 2019 used the technology in 10% of its wells.

A Burisma executive explained how the company benefited from the help of US expertise in Ukraine, in a 2017 interview with Ukrainian trade publication Nefterynok.

Head of country operations Taras Burdeinyi said Burisma partnered with US firms ​​Schlumberger and ProPetro Services for fracking in Ukraine, allowing it to grow the ‘largest modern rig fleet’ in the country, three years after Biden’s intervention.

Mike McCormick, a White House stenographer who was on board the April 2014 Air Force 2 flight, told DailyMail.com that the anonymous ‘senior official’ who gave the briefing was Jake Sullivan, who now serves as President Biden’s National Security Advisor.

‘Our job basically was to record everything that was said to the press, or public facing, and very quickly make transcripts that the White House could release,’ McCormick said.

‘The flight was on April 21, Easter Monday. We flew from DC to Ukraine on Air Force Two. My job was to sit in the back with journalists, with a tape recorder and microphone in case there was a statement to the press.

‘Sullivan came to the back and did a briefing as a ‘senior administration official’. They wanted to publicize what he said, they weren’t afraid of it. But as a senior administration official, so no name attached to it.

‘He talked about what Joe was going to do with energy security for Ukraine.’

Sullivan’s comments were reported, as an anonymous official, in several outlets at the time including NPR and Reuters.

‘[Biden] will speak about both the short- and long-term energy situation in Ukraine,’ the transcript says. 

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‘As he arrives, there will also be a team on the ground from the United States, a team of experts working on the reverse flow issue.

‘That team will be in Kyiv and then will travel also to Slovakia, Poland and Hungary to help address the issue of reversing the flow of natural gas to provide Ukraine with some measure of short-term supply of natural gas as they look to replenish their stores.

‘But also he’ll discuss with them medium- and long-term strategies to boost conventional gas production, and also to begin to take advantage of the unconventional gas reserves that are in Ukraine.’

McCormick, a conservative author who wrote a book on Joe Biden, said nothing seemed amiss at the time – but that was before Hunter’s connection to Burisma had been publicly revealed.

‘At the time, it sounded fine. No one on the plane knew that Hunter had already signed up to be with Burisma. That wouldn’t be announced publicly for another three weeks in mid May.

‘Now that I’ve looked in Hunter’s laptop, I realize that Sullivan was telling the press we’re going to be helping Ukraine’s fracking industry.

‘Burisma Holdings was one of the only companies licensed to do fracking in Ukraine. And Joe Biden would have known that.’

It is unclear whether Biden received specific briefings on Burisma ahead of his April trip to Ukraine. But the then-VP was tasked with handling Ukraine relations, and focused his trip on pushing for the country’s energy independence. 

Biden has repeatedly denied discussing foreign business deals with his son.

The Vice President’s trip to Ukraine was announced on April 12, 2020, after Hunter was already in conversations to join Burisma’s board and was discussing energy deals involving the firm, his emails reveal.

Hunter emailed his business partner and fellow Burisma board member Devon Archer on April 22, 2014 with an excerpt from a news story quoting Joe Biden talking about the need for Ukraine to increase its gas production, and an offer of US assistance to do so.

‘We need to make sure this rag tag temporary Government in the Ukraine understands the value of Burisma to its very existence,’ Archer replied.

‘You should send to Vadim [Pozharsky, a Burisma executive] – makes it look like we are adding value,’ Hunter said.

A September 2020 report on Hunter’s shady dealings with Ukraine and China by the Senate Homeland Security Committee described Burisma as a ‘corrupt Ukrainian gas company’ and said State Department officials viewed its owner Mykola Zlochevsky as a corrupt ‘odious oligarch’.

‘In 2016, Ukraine’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, had an active and ongoing investigation into Burisma and its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky,’ the report said. The FBI were also assisting MI5 in a case against Zlochevsky to ‘seize corrupt assets’, according to Geoffrey Pyatt, then-US ambassador to Ukraine, the report noted.

Both the FBI and Republican-controlled House committees are currently investigating Hunter’s business dealings in Ukraine, over alleged tax crimes, illegal foreign lobbying and money laundering. 

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer has said he is investigating whether Joe knew about, or even profited from, Hunter’s work for Ukrainian and Chinese companies.

As well as hiring Hunter, Burisma also paid former Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski €1million (about $1million) to join its board from January 2014.

McCormick pointed to Biden’s public comments he transcribed during a trip to Poland in March 2014, revealing a potential close relationship between Kwaśniewski and the then-VP.

According to a White House transcript from a joint press conference with Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski on March 18 2014 at the Presidential Palace in Warsaw, Biden told the Polish premier: ‘there’s a Polish cavalryman’s sword presented to me by your predecessor, by your government, that hangs proudly in my family home.’

The comment could be a reference to Kwaśniewski, who served as president from 1995 to 2005. He was succeeded by Lech Kaczyński. Komorowski took power following Kaczyński’s death in 2010.

Biden would have been required to report a substantial present such as a ceremonial sword in the State Department’s annual register of foreign gifts.

But no such gift appears in the records between 2014 and 1999, the year of the earliest report on the Federal Register website.

The only Polish sword in the records was given in June 2009 by General Franciszek Gagor to the Pentagon’s Admiral Michael Mullen, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Mullen handed it over to General Services Administration officials.

Kaczyński did, however, give Biden a pen with a 14 karat white gold nib worth $580 in October 2009.