Lifting the crude oil export ban is an idea only the oil companies and their paid Representatives in Washington could love. Exporting US crude oil will immediately raise the price of oil in North America, raise profits for Big Oil, and thus increase dangerous drilling in our backyards and on our public lands. More drilling means more climate change, more pipeline spills, more rail car explosions, and more poisoned land and water.
Senator Lisa Murkowski has put U.S. crude oil exports front and center of her policy agenda today. The debate on crude oil exports, like that on natural gas (LNG) and coal exports, should be about climate change.
Today Bloomberg News revealed that the American Petroleum Institute (API) has developed a strategy to challenge America’s crude export regulations using international trade law. Deregulating U.S. crude oil exports would make fracking and the tar sands even more profitable than it already is and enable the industry to go into ever more marginal and extreme reserves to produce more of these extreme oils.
Proponents of the Keystone XL pipeline regularly claim that the pipeline will replace heavy oil from Venezuela and elsewhere if it is built. In fact just this week, Rep. Lee Terry (R-NE) claimed that Venezuela’s recent offer of asylum for whistleblower Edward Snowden is somehow a reason to approve the pipeline. The reality is that crude delivered … Read More
Only a few months ago, we reported on the release of the IEA’s World Energy Outlook, which for the first time ever acknowledged that we cannot burn at least two thirds of the fossil fuel reserves we currently classify as ‘proven’. So, one would assume that the IEA would agree that further exploitation of such … Read More
The Financial Times has just revealed that the oil trading arms of BP, Shell and Vitol have applied for licenses to export U.S. crude to Canada.
Kazakhstan is making the international oil majors twitchy by saying it may impose a crude oil export duty as soon as mid-2008 to stabilise supplies on the domestic market. According to the Deputy Energy Minister Lyazzat Kiinov, the government is due to discuss the energy ministry’s draft proposals tomorrow, and set a date for sometime … Read More
A new report finds restoring the crude oil export ban could lead to reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions of as much as 80 to 181 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent each year
In which we demonstrate that dismissing the climate impact of lifting the crude oil export ban is wrong.
Washington DC is seeing a renewed push to eliminate the 40-year old regulation limiting the export of crude oil from the United States. The American Petroleum Institute has listed it as one of its top lobbying priorities for this Congressional session, and Senator Lisa Murkowski has begun a legislative campaign to eliminate the ban in … Read More
