States, industry and energy security advocates are converging on Washington this week to add strength to a growing effort in Congress to kill a federal ban on oil exports.
The centerpiece of the week’s push will be an “Energy Exports Summit” on Tuesday organized by a group representing Western state attorneys general and a relatively new organization called the Energy Independence Coalition.
The summit follows the start of efforts in both the House and Senate to repeal the ban.
American Petroleum Institute CEO Jack Gerard joined a growing contingent of House Republicans and Democrats last week to tout a bill to repeal the ban, which the lawmakers and the industry see as a barrier to advancing the market for U.S. crude oil abroad.
In the Senate, an effort is also under way by Energy & Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, to reverse the export policy and allow the nation to export the large supplies of petroleum being produced from shale formations, the deep underground rock that oil companies are producing oil and natural gas from using a drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”
Murkowski is seeking to attach an amendment to the Iran bill pending on the Senate floor.
A Senate aide said Murkowski’s amendment is trying to show that removing U.S. sanctions would allow Iran to increase its oil exports but would do nothing to help U.S. oil producers. The aide says Murkowski is not looking to push for a vote on her amendment if it disrupts the Iran debate. She is talking with the author of the Iran legislation, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., to work out if the measure is the best place to address the oil export ban, the aide said.
Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-North Dakota, co-sponsored the amendment with Murkowski.
The Democrat joined Murkowski on the Senate floor last week to address repealing the Commerce Department’s oil export ban, which was put into place in the 1970s in response to the Saudi oil embargo.
“We now live in a global world and it’s past time that we end an outdated policy from a bygone era by lifting the ban on exporting American crude oil,” Heitkamp said. “Other countries, including Iran, export much of their crude oil. But in the U.S. — and particularly in North Dakota where we are the number two crude oil producing state —we need to be able to step up, compete on a level playing field, and get the best price on the world market.
“It would also encourage our friends and allies to import or leverage American oil to lessen the influence and dominant energy positions of unstable countries like Iran, Russia or Venezuela,” she said. “We have a real opportunity to make a needed change that supports our country, our economy, and our security.”
Even if the amendment doesn’t move forward, oil exports will remain a top area of concern for Murkowski in her pursuit of passing comprehensive energy legislation by the end of the year. The aide says Murkowski will pursue multiple strategies in trying to remove the oil export ban, including comprehensive legislation and floor action through amendments.
Heitkamp will join Republicans at the summit to reiterate support for lifting the ban. GOP Sens. John Barrasso of Wyoming and Steve Daines of Montana will address the summit.
The Energy Information Administration, in its recently issued annual energy outlook, says the nation will become a net exporter of natural gas in 2017, with oil following suit in the next six years. Most of the recent increases in oil production are a result of a surge in shale drilling in North Dakota and Texas.
Some energy analysts say similar projections assume the ban will be lifted as a logical outgrowth of increased oil production, which makes the 40-year-old ban obsolete and unnecessary.
On Wednesday, the export push continues at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, with a special luncheon featuring Doug Suttles, the president and CEO of the Encana Corp., one of the nation’s largest independent oil and gas producers.
Suttles will address “the value of domestic oil and gas exploration, and the need to lift the 40-year-old crude oil export ban,” according to the Chamber’s Institute for 21st Century Energy and the U.S. Chamber Foundation.
