Saudi America by Bethany McLean

Author:Bethany McLean
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780999745458
Publisher: Columbia Global Reports
Published: 2018-07-17T16:00:00+00:00

Exporting natural gas requires the Energy Department to review LNG export permit applications in order to ensure that they are in the nation’s best interest, but exporting oil required Congressional action. The first member of Congress to call for a repeal of the ban was Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who did so in early 2014. She was soon joined by a chorus of voices, such as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who argued in an op-ed that “nothing would make us stronger and Putin and ISIS weaker.” His point was that lifting the ban would “significantly dent the global high price of oil,” thereby weakening regimes that depended on high oil prices.

Environmentalists were adamantly opposed to the repeal, with the Sierra Club arguing that it would increase oil drilling and “create yet another consumer giveaway to an already wealthy industry” by causing the price of gasoline to rise. Even the powerful American Petroleum Institute, long the chief lobbying organization for oil and gas producers, was split, because some refiners opposed to lifting the ban—the lower the price they had to pay for crude, the higher their profit margin.

In the spring of 2014, the refiners even formed their own lobbying group called Consumers and Refiners United for Domestic Energy, or CRUDE. “We’re on the cusp of a historic opportunity—finally—to gain energy independence and security, and break through the grip of foreign oil cartels on the U.S. economy,” the lobbyist for CRUDE said. “To smash that opportunity away by all of a sudden exporting crude oil is definitely not in the interest of the United States.”

Later that year, a group of producers countered with their own lobbying group, called Producers for American Crude Oil Exports, or PACE. The coalition hired a longtime lobbyist named George Baker of Williams and Jensen with a single goal in mind: to overturn the ban. Among other things, industry-friendly groups produced studies showing that exports would decrease, rather than increase, the price of gasoline, because exports would help lower the global benchmark price.

In response to the push, the Obama Administration was publicly cagey, saying only that it was a “policy decision” that should be made by the Commerce Department, so the White House wouldn’t support legislation specifically aimed at repealing the ban. When the House passed a bill, President Obama threatened to veto it, arguing that it would further American reliance on fossil fuels.

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