What a load of shit.
Of course the winner will be the Oil Thugs and the losers will be the American people.
Expect $10 a gallon or more once this shit goes through.
1-9-2014
http://www.businessweek.com/article...t-s-dot-starts-exporting-oil?campaign_id=yhoo
Who Wins, Who Loses if the U.S. Starts Exporting Oil?
Its been simmering for more than a year, but the debate over whether to lift a nearly 40-year ban on U.S. crude oil exports
kicked into high gear this week with Republican lawmakers, big business leaders, and of course oil lobbyists all calling it an outdated policy that needs to end.
The oil ban distorts markets, and given the surge in U.S. oil production, a protectionist measure put in place as a reaction to the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s is no longer practical. Its a new day, said Gerard. Its a new time.
If the U.S. did start exporting lots of crude, the biggest winners would obviously be the oil companies that produce it. Keeping all that crude bottled up domestically has reduced prices. Since most of this new oil in the U.S. is being produced by horizontal drilling methods, which are much more expensive than conventional methods used in, say, Saudi Arabia., U.S. producers are worried that if oil prices at home get too low, drilling for it in such places as North Dakota will no longer be profitable.
On the other side of the equation, the biggest losers of lifting the export ban would arguably be U.S. refiners that have had access to all that cheap crude. This has helped juice their profits and given them quite an advantage over foreign competitors.
The U.S. now exports record amounts of refined productsgasoline, jet fuel, dieselthat help lower the nations trade deficit and at the same
time help put European refiners out of business.
If the ban were lifted, domestic oil prices would, in theory, rise more in line with international prices. Good news for producers, bad news for refiners, which could lose some of their price advantage and actually perhaps force them to begin increasing the amount of foreign oil they buy.
Big refiners, such as Valero Energy (
VLO), argue that keeping crude tied up domestically allows the U.S. to
export a much more valuable product in the form of gasoline, as opposed to merely pushing the less valuable raw material onto the world market.
OPEC doesnt necessarily want to see U.S. crude competing on the global market. In a way, though, OPEC countries are already dealing with the consequences of the U.S. oil boom. OPEC now exports 44 percent fewer barrels of oil to the U.S. than it did at the peak of that trade in January 2008. As a result, more Middle Eastern crude is finding its way to Asia.
While its unclear just where U.S. oil exports would be headed if the ban were lifted, Asia seems a reasonable destination. So does Europe.