Philip Rinaldi News

As the first U.S. oil condensate exports head to Asia from the Gulf Coast, crude producers and refiners are exploring ways to get around a century-old law that makes it three times more expensive to ship by water between U.S. ports than to sail to a foreign port. The Jones Act, originally passed to protect the U.S. maritime industry, restricts passage between U.S. ports to ships that are U.S.-built, U.S.-flagged and U.S.-crewed. If oil exports pick up pace while the Jones Act is left in place, U.S.

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.