Why should we lift the US oil export ban? The short answer
is that we have a mismatch between refineries in Louisiana and the crude from
fracking shale. The refineries are built to handle heavy crude from Latin
America. The crude from shale is very light crude, which means it has a
very different chemical composition than heavy crude. Heavy crude refineries can't
refine light crude. So why not modify our existing refineries to handle
light crude? It
would be cheaper to build a new refinery. However, the environmental reviews
required make building a new refinery prohibitively expensive. There's also the
Jones Act, which requires all shipping from one US port to another be on US
flag ships with US crews. This makes moving the light crude from Louisiana,
where all the pipelines go, to New Jersey, where there are some light crude refineries,
too expensive to be worth it. Global warming alarmists don't want more oil
produced, so they will fight any change in any of these laws and regulations.
Remember, the Keystone pipeline was fought because of its potential
contribution to global warming. Speaking of Keystone, the Louisiana refineries
would be able to refine the very heavy Canadian crude from the Keystone
pipeline easily.
A Call for Healing
Democrats Call for Healing the Country