The energy industry is making a hard shift from lobbying against ozone regulations to lifting the 40-year-old ban on crude oil exports, in anticipation of a vote next week in the House to repeal the ban.
The industry was engaged for weeks in an eleventh-hour push against costly Environmental Protection Agency rules to reduce smog-forming ozone emissions that it says would harm energy and infrastructure development across the country. Now, energy groups have replaced that campaign with a push to get Congress to repeal the oil-export ban.
Around the country, the group Producers for American Crude Oil Exports will be shelling out advertising bucks for a television blitz to be shown during this weekend’s college football games, according to a strategist for the group, who gave the Washington Examiner a preview of the ad buy.
The ad says President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran undermines U.S. oil and gas producers by lifting sanctions on the Persian Gulf country and allowing it to begin selling Iranian oil in the global market.
That would have the effect of curtailing U.S. production and harming jobs and livelihoods, unless Congress repeals the ban.
“Each ad is the same,” the strategist said, except “the last few seconds just have different member names/photos/phone numbers depending on what congressional district the ad is running.” The ad urges citizens to call their lawmakers and press them to vote for repealing the ban.
The ad campaign began Friday and will “run through the end of next week. The ad will run on cable news and some college this football Saturday, while the digital component” began Oct. 1, the strategist said. It will run in 11 congressional districts in Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, New Mexico and Texas.
The group funding the campaign includes many of the nation’s largest independent oil and gas companies that are producing oil from shale rock deep underground using the process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Companies such as Anadarko, Apache, Noble and Chesapeake Energy are part of the group, with major oil company ConocoPhillips and many others. The nation has become the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas due to the advent of shale.
“The crude oil export ban not only puts U.S. companies at a significant competitive disadvantage, but threatens our national security interests,” said the group’s executive director, George Baker. “Permanently repealing the ban would provide our global allies with a stable and secure supply of oil, while creating and protecting jobs here at home and putting downward pressure on U.S. gasoline prices.”
Baker says the ad is part of the group’s “ongoing education, advocacy and engagement efforts” meant to remind policymakers and the American people “of what’s at stake.” He says they are urging House members to vote for the bill being brought to the floor next week.
At the same time, groups are fighting against repealing the ban. Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen consumer advocacy group is actively protesting lifing the ban, while refiners represented by the CRUDE Coalition continue to press lawmakers against repealing it. The coalition says lifting the ban would raise gasoline prices, while making the country more dependent on imports, including those from Iran.
The House bill was expected to come up for a vote last week, but the resignation of House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio forced the GOP leadership to push it back. Aides say they are hopeful the bill will be brought to the floor ahead of the Columbus Day holiday Oct. 12.
The producers are being joined in the their advocacy efforts by non-industry groups, such as Vets4Energy, a veterans groups that supports lifting the ban as a matter of national security. The group descended on Capitol Hill late last week to meet with lawmakers to press them to support legislation in both chambers lifting the export restrictions.
Although both industry and the veterans group cite the Iranian deal in lobbying to pass the legislation, Democrats in the Senate say it could become an impediment.
On Thursday, a bill lifting the export ban was passed out of the Senate Banking Committee with an amendment that could make it more difficult to pass in the full Senate. The amendment would not lift sanctions on Iran unless it first pays reparations to Americans injured in the Islamic Republic’s state-sponsored terrorist attacks.
Democrats at the committee mark-up hearing said the amendment offered by Pat Toomey, R-Penn., would act as a “poison pill” in passing the legislation, further complicating what many say will be a tough vote in the upper chamber.
