EnergyFactor By ExxonMobil | Pespectives has a new home

Yet more evidence the crude export ban should go

Virtually every study that has looked into the possibility of the U.S. scrapping its ban on crude oil exports has concluded that doing so would benefit American consumers.

Trading_Crude_Feature_09-2015Add one more important study to the list.

Yesterday the U.S. Energy Information Administration released its long-awaited investigation into the likely effects of removing the ban on exporting crude oil that has been in place since the 1970s.

The report’s major findings echo those of earlier studies concluding that ending the crude export ban would lead to greater domestic production of oil. In the process this would create jobs, boost the economy, generate increased tax revenues, and put downward pressure on the prices consumers pay at the pump.

The impetus for ending the ban comes from the millions of additional barrels of daily oil production brought online in recent years from America’s shale regions. The United States has gone from a nation worried about rising levels of energy imports to one boasting a new abundance of domestic energy supplies.

Mark Totman, a union official in Cleveland, summed it up nicely recently in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “It’s time for us to embrace our role as a global energy super power,” he wrote. “Washington needs to modernize our nation’s energy policy to reflect this new reality of energy abundance and that means lifting the ban on crude oil exports.”


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