Screen Shot 2015-07-20 at 3.29.00 PMToday we’ve released a new briefing, entitled “Lift the Ban, Cook the Climate: Why Eliminating the Crude Export Ban Fails the Climate Test,” detailing why Congress and the President should stand up to current efforts by the oil industry to eliminate the ban on crude oil exports.

Over the years, the motivations behind Big Oil’s actions have become abundantly clear and consistent: It always boils down to protecting, and enhancing, oil executives’ ridiculous profits at the expense of anything that gets in their way.

The latest example can be seen in the halls of Congress, where the American Petroleum Institute and its friends have unleashed an army of lobbyists intent on killing a long-standing law regulating the export of crude oil in order to increase profits to the oil industry.

Removing the export ban would cause a hazardous increase in oil drilling in the U.S. and lead to increased climate emissions as well as dangerous oil transportation via rail and pipeline through towns across the country. Its impact on gas prices would be small at best, and pales in comparison to the risk the increased drilling would place on all of us.

Our new briefing released today details why ending the crude export ban fails the climate test and would imperil our communities. At a time of climate crisis, relaxing oil regulations is precisely the wrong move. We need to keep the oil in the ground.

You can find the new briefing, “Lift the Ban, Cook the Climate,” here and you can also read previous testimony to Congress on the subject, delivered by Oil Change International’s Executive Director, here.

15 Comments

  • We need this ban to continue. We can pay now (by banning oil exports) or pay later with more serious droughts, floods and forest fires
    and decimation of our fish population that can’t
    adjust to such a rapid change.

  • Please ask a staffer to brief you on this major issue. I look forwasrd to hearing from you about your decision on efforts to stop the export ban for the sake of our planetary home and its inhabitants. W.H.

  • “Extracting oil” sounds benign. However, it compromises our safe drinking water in many communities. In these times of swiftly escalating temperatures and horribly destructive fires, it is unconscionable that our very comfortably Washington ensconced Congress would vote to continue this destruction of our nation and planet.

  • We cannot make it profitable for oil to be shipped abroad, this will increase the amount of drilling and transporting oil, threatening our communities further with the health and
    environmental effects of fracking drilling and leaking, spilling and leaking pipelines, polluted air,exploding trains, methane and CO2 increases from extraction and transport. If export is allowed we cannot survive on the planet. Protect the export ban!

  • Exporting crude oil will raise oil and fuel prices to consumers and hurt our economy while hastening the exhaustion of these irreplaceable resources.

  • Keep tough regulations on oil drilling in the U.S. Greed brings dangers to voters and pollution to the environment. We can live without Big Oil but not it’s destruction of our air and land.

  • Well Members of Congress: What kind of world do you plan to leave as your legacy in public service?

    One that continues the ways which are polluting the water, land and air.

    Or moving to a better world where carbon based fuels are left in the ground where they do not harm our children’s future.

  • PLEASE DON”T!!! Don’t repeal the ban on exporting crude oil! we’ll just cook the planet faster. I want my grandchildren to have a life on this planet.

  • Intense motivation by profit goals must be replaced with intense motivation to nurture this planet. Why? Children. Not profits, children.

  • Crude Oil Ban must not be lifted. To do that
    would open the doors to disaster for the planet. It has long been proven that there is only 1 place for Crude Oil, & that place is IN THE GROUND!! Do not contribute to destroying the planet by totally ignoring the needed steps to saving it!!!!!

  • This falls under the larger umbrella of global warming, a runaway train we need to stop while there’s still track left.

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