Crude Oil Export Ban News

Developments in the oil tanker market in the past decade dominated by geopolitics, says shipping association BIMCO.Crude oil and product tanker markets alike have faced high volatility in recent weeks and months, largely due to geopolitics and the constantly evolving situation in the global oil markets. The first major disturbance since the fall in the oil price between the fourth quarter of 2104 and first quarter of 2016 came in the fourth quarter of 2019, after which freight rates have bounced back despite a collapse in demand.In these extraordinary times…

Tom Crowley has become the face of the U.S. maritime industry, steadily building his transport and logistics company into a formidable goliath. From Jones Act waivers to emerging emissions technology to the devastation of Hurricane Maria on Puerto Rico, Crowley weighs in on the pressing matters of maritime with refreshing candor. The last time we caught up with Tom Crowley two years ago at this headquarters in Jacksonville, Fla., we were handed a safety bulletin and Tom Crowley himself came down to the lobby to greet us.

Today, Congress passed the Omnibus Appropriations bill, H.R. 2029, which includes a provision lifting the existing U.S. crude oil export ban. U.S. oil exports will strengthen America’s national and energy security and result in substantial benefits for consumers and job creation across the country, according to the National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA). NOIA noted also that the bill did not include a key priority for the offshore energy industry –statutory language requiring incorporation of industry’s significant concerns in the final Well Control Rule proposed by the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) – the…

The U.S. Congress could lift the 40-year old ban on domestic crude oil exports within a year as a drop in gasoline prices and the potential return of Iranian oil to global markets makes it an easier measure for politicians to support, Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysts said on Thursday. U.S. gasoline prices have dropped since last year along with global crude prices, thanks to strong crude output from the United States, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. On Thursday, the U.S. average for regular gasoline at the pump was nearly $2.74 a gallon, down from $3.65 a year ago, according to the AAA motorist club. If that remains the case, it has the potential to allay politicians' fears that they could be blamed any rise in gasoline prices if the crude oil export ban was lifted.

Lawmakers in the House of Representatives who are trying to end the decades-old ban on U.S. crude oil exports said on Thursday they were gaining support after a Democrat joined the Republican-led effort. Representative Henry Cuellar became the first Democrat to sign on to a bill launched in February by Representative Joe Barton, a Republican and fellow Texan. "If we are able to lift the crude oil ban this is going to open up new markets where Texas businesses can create more jobs at home," said Cuellar, whose district includes the oilfields of Eagle Ford, where much of the U.S. boom in light sweet crude has been taking place over the last half decade.

A House of Representatives panel will hold a hearing on Dec. 11 to explore whether a decades-old law that prohibits the export of crude oil makes sense in an era of domestic energy abundance. The House subcommittee on energy and power, chaired by Representative Ed Whitfield, will hone in on the 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act, drafted in response to the 1973 oil crisis. The law prohibited the export of most crude oil, created the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and Corporate Average Fuel Economy rules for cars and trucks, also known as CAFE standards.

BHP Billiton Ltd is set to be the first company to export lightly processed ultra-light U.S. oil without explicit permission from the government, further testing the limits of an increasingly contentious ban on foreign sales. Eight months after two other U.S. energy firms said they had received the first formal authorization to sell domestic condensate abroad, BHP said it had determined that its oil would also meet the legal criteria for export since it was being minimally processed in distillation towers in South Texas. "We took the necessary time to thoroughly examine the issues involved and ensure that the processed condensate was eligible for export…

First major public appearance of new Total head; he challenges European politicians to fight US ban. The new head of French energy major Total challenged Europe to fight Washington over the U.S. oil export ban, in his first public appearance since his predecessor Christophe de Margerie was killed in a Moscow plane crash last week. Patrick Pouyanne said on Thursday the export ban flouts free-trade agreements and puts European and Asian refiners at a disadvantage, making a bold appeal to European politicians. "We need to fight and put this topic on the table," Pouyanne said during a sometimes emotional appearance at London's annual Oil & Money conference, where de Margerie had been a popular speaker over the years. "I hope the European Commission raises this issue ...

Ending a 40-year old ban on U.S. crude oil exports would not raise domestic gasoline prices because it would put more petroleum onto global markets, where fuel prices are primarily set, a study by The Aspen Institute said on Tuesday. As the U.S. oil boom of the last six years builds an excess of light crude along the Gulf Coast refining hub, calls have risen for Congress and the Obama administration to relax the ban on shipments to global customers. The restriction was put in place in the 1970s following the Arab oil embargo. Many politicians have not embraced lifting the ban so far, fearing that they could be punished at the ballot box for any increase in gasoline prices.

3rd U.S. condensate export cargo heading to Singapore; Pioneer expects exports to rise to 50,000 bpd next year. Eyes exports of bigger cargoes to reduce freight costs. Pioneer Natural Resources plans to double its U.S. exports of condensate, an ultra-light oil, to 50,000 barrels per day (bpd) next year, its chief executive said on Monday. The U.S. shale resources explorer, along with Enterprise Product Partners LP, received the green light from the U.S. government in March to ship the ultra-light crude as the country softened a 40-year ban on oil exports. "We operate 50,000 bpd and we're selling probably about 20-25,000 bpd, but eventually we'll get up to 50,000 bpd," Scott Sheffield told Reuters, saying this would happen next year.

Oil logistics specialist Buckeye Partners LP will pay $860 million for control of Trafigura's prized oil facilities in the Texas shale hub amid expectations Washington will relax its crude oil export ban. U.S. firm Buckeye will buy 80 percent of the global commodities trader's South Stream assets which include a deep-water tanker loading terminal in Corpus Christi, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) storage and a small refining unit known as a condensate splitter. Trafigura will hold on to the remaining 20 percent in the Corpus Christi facility, described in Trafigura's 2013 annual report as "one of the company's most important strategic assets ... at the center of the action in the world's largest, most dynamic, energy market". The deal comes at a time of increased pressure on the U.S.

The head of energy company Royal Dutch Shell said on Tuesday that U.S. policymakers should lift the crude oil export ban because allowing the shipments would make global energy system more stable. "Policy makers here in the U.S. should embrace a truly liberalized diverse and global energy market," Shell CEO Ben van Beurden told a conference on energy at Columbia University. U.S. oil and natural gas exports "would reinforce the long term future of North American energy production," significantly improve the U.S. balance of trade, and "help to make the global energy system much more stable," he said. The United States has banned oil exports since the 1970s Arab oil embargo…

The U.S. Energy Information Administration plans to release two reports in September examining some of the issues surrounding a potential end to the nation's decades-old ban on most crude oil exports, the EIA's chief said on Monday. Some lawmakers have pressed the EIA, the statistical arm of the Department of Energy, to provide analysis on the implications of relaxing or abolishing the ban, as debate over the future of the moratorium has intensified. The EIA's upcoming reports will focus on the impact to U.S. gasoline prices at the pump from changing domestic and global oil markets, and on the costs of building different types of crude oil refining units in the United States.

The United States should lift its nearly four-decade ban on crude oil exports to help encourage domestic production, the Washington Post said in an editorial on Thursday. Booming shale oil production has led to an intense debate over the moratorium, which was imposed by Congress in 1975 in the wake of the Arab oil embargo. Allowing crude oil exports would help address a mismatch between rising light crude output from U.S. shale formations and Gulf Coast refineries better suited to handle heavy crude, the Post argued in an editorial. "The export ban was a desperate ploy in the 1970s to control commodities markets amid spikes in oil prices induced by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries," the newspaper said. Earlier this summer, the U.S.

U.S. shipbuilders are making a $500 million bet on robust domestic demand for crude oil from newly-tapped shale fields by building new tankers without having lined up customers to lease them. Philly Tankers AS, majority-owned by Aker Philadelphia Shipyard is building four ships on spec, and Seabulk Tankers Inc, an indirect wholly-owned subsidiary of SEACOR Holdings Inc, is building another two. The 330,000-barrel ships, which cost about $125 million each, conform to the 1920 Jones Act, which requires ships moving between U.S.

Continental Resources , the largest leaseholder in the booming North Dakota oil fields, recently applied for a U.S. license to swap crude oil abroad in an attempt to get around the country's 40-year ban on exports, a spokeswoman confirmed on Friday. "The pending license is to further demonstrate the need for a free market for crude, just like refined products already have," the spokeswoman said, without specifying when Continental made the application. Continental applied for the license through the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security, which did not comment on the matter. The United States may soon pass Russia and Saudi Arabia to become the world's top oil producer thanks to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and other modern drilling techniques.

Four U.S. oil refiners, trying to counter growing calls to lift the nation's ban on most crude oil exports, have launched the first major lobbying effort to keep abundant U.S. oil supplies from being sold overseas. Rising U.S. shale oil production has opened the door to a possible revision of the decades-old policy restricting most exports of unrefined petroleum. Various groups and lawmakers favoring exports have been fast out of the gate, seizing on a comment by U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz in December that it might be time to take another look at the law. Philip Rinaldi, chief executive of Philadelphia Energy Solutions, said the anti-export group Consumers and Refiners United for Domestic Energy, or CRUDE, was formed with the goal of preventing a hasty reversal of policy.