Crude Oil Sales Ban Must Be Lifted

This site has written before (click here)  about the crippling of the US petroleum producers by not permitting them to sell crude oil outside of the US. The posting warned of continuing loss of American jobs and resulting in higher crude oil prices.   Now the chairman and CEO of Continental Resources (Harold Hamm) tells why the ban on US crude oil sales must be lifted. In a WSJ online posting, he says this:

” The situation is urgent, as OPEC’s recent predatory pricing tactics are also hurting America and prematurely ending the boom in U.S. oil production due to hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, and horizontal drilling. The U.S. rig count has dropped by more than 50% since Thanksgiving, according to the oilfield services company Baker Hughes. More than 126,000 oil and gas workers have been laid off, and job losses are expected to double if the export ban is not lifted.”

“Congress must lift the ban on U.S. crude oil exports. The ban is a terrible relic of the Nixon era that harms the American economy. As Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska) has pointed out, restrictions on oil trade effectively amount to domestic sanctions. Combined with a mismatch in refining capacity, the ban on oil exports is creating a significant discount for U.S. light oil at no benefit to anyone except refiners and their foreign ownership. It has cost U.S. states, producers and royalty owners $125 billion in lost revenue in four years, according to industry estimates.”

“Exporting oil would not drive up prices at the pump. American drivers buy refined products, which the U.S. already exports. Many studies—from a range of institutions and government agencies, including the Congressional Budget Office and the Energy Information Administration—have shown that lifting the export ban could actually lower gas prices.”

So this law needs to go. It has resulted in 126,000 lost jobs. It has cost $125 billion in lost revenue. It strengthens OPEC and our enemies. Tell your people in Congress to get rid of this 1960’s ban on crude oil sales.

The WSJ article can be reached by clicking here. It is behind a paywall.

Here is a little secrete—if you type in the name of the posting, “America’s Self-Punishing Oil Export Ban” in your search engine, you will be able to read the article without a subscription.   WSJ knows this, and recently has started keeping track of how many time you do this and shut you off after a certain number of times using this trick to read their postings.

cbdakota