House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that the US should ban Russian oil imports to punish Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine — breaking with President Biden, who is resisting pressure to do so.

“I’m all for that… ban the oil coming from Russia,” Pelosi (D-Calif.) said at her weekly press briefing on Capitol Hill. 

Members of Congress, including other top Democrats, argue Russia’s lucrative exports fund Putin’s war effort, but the White House says it doesn’t want to cause domestic fuel prices to rise.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday that “we don’t have a strategic interest in reducing the global supply of energy.”

Psaki said “if you look at publicly available data it’s only about 10 percent of our imports. But again, reducing the supply out there would have an impact on prices and on prices at the gas pump.”

Psaki deflected questions about Biden’s own moves to reduce the long-term supply of fossil fuels. Last year he scrapped major US oil pipeline projects and tried to halt new drilling leases on public land.

Biden took no questions from reporters Thursday, but he said while announcing new sanctions against Russian businessmen that “the goal is to maximize the impact on Putin and Russia and minimize the harm and loss to our allies and friends around the world.”

High gas prices generally are bad news politically for the party in charge in DC and Democrats currently hold the White House and both chambers of Congress.

Deputy White House national security adviser Daleep Singh told reporters last week that “our sanctions are not designed to cause any disruption to the current flow of energy from Russia to the world.”

Biden said Wednesday that he’s open to banning Russian energy exports — telling a reporter on the White House lawn that “nothing is off the table” — before Psaki proceeded to lay out why it wasn’t happening.

Biden previously faced pressure from lawmakers of both parties to sanction Putin’s vast personal wealth and to unplug Russia from the SWIFT international banking system — and he took actions to do so over the weekend after initially resisting the ideas.

The US and NATO allies slapped severe sanctions on Russian banks and oligarchs that sent the country’s economy reeling and the value of the ruble tumbling. However, the sanctions have not touched Russia’s energy sector as oil prices climbed to nearly $120 a barrel on Thursday, the highest in decades.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WVa.) is among those calling on the White House to significantly increase domestic energy production and stop buying crude oil from Russia.

Manchin introduced the Ban Russian Energy Imports Act with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).

The legislation “would declare a national emergency with respect to Russian aggression and immediately prohibit the importation of Russian energy products,” the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee said in a statement.

“By leaving Russia’s energy exports untouched, the United States is ignoring one of our most potent options to stop the bloodshed,” Murkowski added. “We must ban Russia’s energy imports into the US so that Americans aren’t forced to help finance their growing atrocities and halt the Russian aggression.”

However, Pelosi said Thursday that she opposed opening up drilling on federal lands.

“The issue of the price of gas and the price of oil is directly related to what is happening, doesn’t mean it can’t go up and down without a Russian diabolical intervention into a sovereign country. But it is related to that,” she said.

Pelosi also echoed comments made by Oleksandra Ustinova, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, about the reluctance to target Russian energy even as people in her country are being killed, wounded and forced to leave their homes.

“I was looking at the sanctions, and I was very surprised because we were promised that if the Russian soldier steps on the Ukrainian land, we’ll have a really good response,” Ustinova said on Fox News Wednesday.

Get the latestupdatesin the Russia-Ukraine conflict with The Post’s live coverage.

“Well, I’m sorry, but the sanctions avoided the energy sector. So, let’s talk honestly that you care about whether you pay an extra 50 cents for your gas prices or how many people die in Ukraine,” she added.

Pelosi said she heard the parliamentarian’s comments about people complaining about the price of gas.

“We don’t want people to have to pay for the price of gas,” said the speaker, who suggested she would support a gas tax holiday provided “the consumer benefits, rather than more profits for the oil companies.”

Murkowski on Wednesday said the ban on imports is necessary to deter Putin — even if it drives gas prices higher for American motorists.

“We are going to see price increases. Nobody wants to see that. And this is going to hurt. But we all need to recognize Europe is in the midst of a war with Russia now. Innocent people are dying, children are dying,” Murkowski told Politico.

“We have not been in as volatile as a situation as anytime in my life. And so we are looking right now from a very short window,” she added.

The US imported about 200,000 barrels of oil from Russia per day in 2021, about 3 percent of its total intake, according to the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers.