Pressure builds to allow US exports of crude

[eridani]

http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/09/20/with-production-booming-pressure-builds-allow-exports-crude-oil/F1kKlSk7jBMtLWuolivpDL/story.html

Senator Edward J. Markey is fighting an increasingly lonely, and perhaps futile, battle to prevent the overseas export of crude oil gushing from shale fields in North Dakota, Texas, and other parts of the country.

For nearly 40 years, US companies have been banned from exporting American crude, a policy imposed after the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s shook the US economy to its core. But as domestic production hits record levels, the administration of President Obama is loosening the longtime restriction, recently allowing two Texas companies to ship an ultralight crude oil known as condensate to overseas markets.

Those decisions, made earlier this year, are viewed as the first steps toward lifting the decades-old export ban — a policy that Markey and others view as short-sighted for a nation that until only recently relied heavily on foreign oil to meet its energy needs.

“We have essentially begun a big change in American energy policy without a big debate,” said Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s subcommittee on international energy and climate change. “We need a timeout for a national debate on where our energy policies are going and whether we want to be energy independent or not.”

[GeorgeGist]

1. Short-sightedness is as American ...

as Wall St.

[pscot]

2. Americans aren't using enough oil