Stop selling oil outside U.S.

[The Bopper]

Up until 2015, it was illegal to sell American oil outside the U.S. Big oil lobbied with a lot of money to change that. Now they pretend it can't be stopped. If the current President wanted to actually lower prices here, he could do so tomorrow, but his main contributors wouldn't like it, so it won't get done..

[flying rabbit]

1. Wait...Wut?

[Lifeafter70]

2. That only applied to crude oil

They could still sell refined such as gas and diesel to other countries. It was put in place in 1975.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

3. Thanks. The OP had me wondering. I asked.

The GAO has this to say about that.

Crude Oil Markets: Effects of the Repeal of the Crude Oil Export Ban

GAO-21-118
Published: Oct 21, 2020. Publicly Released: Nov 20, 2020.

{Snip. It's not long.}

[AZJonnie]

4. From what I've read lately It sounds good on paper but it won't work in fact it would drive US prices up

Simply put the oil that's exported (the shale oil stuff from the frackers) is not what US refineries are set up to process. The oil producers sell that to countries that have the proper refineries for this type. Stopping the sales of US oil would drive world prices up ever higher by taking 4.5-5M barrels a day off the world market, and the US would just have to sit on it and all the fracking companies would fold probably fairly quickly. We can (and already do) blend some of it with the kind of oil our refineries use (built 50+ years ago) so some can be used here to boost overall supplies, but it's economically a bad choice as it's less valuable that way vs. selling it overseas, and we can't blend in that much of it either.

Also from what I've read, the USA still imports more oil every day than it exports, believe it or not, though we're a 'net exporter' of fossil fuels if you count refined products and LNG, but we're not a net exporter of crude.

[The Bopper]

5. Not true

There are several American refineries that use "cokers" to process the "dirty" Canadian shale oil. We are literally taking the pollution here as it's processed and selling the "clean" gasoline to foreign countries and we could use it here instead, which would because of the surplus, lower prices here.

[AZJonnie]

6. Any chance typing the below prompt into the AI of your choice, I recommend claude?

If the US wanted to, could it easily repurpose the crude extracted on US shores that is currently sold on the export market and simply use that to replace the 6M barrels a day that we import? If not, why not? Is it pure economics where it's worth more to sell? Could we physically do so, will the refineries handle it instead? Do we even export enough to match our imports or is the US actually a net crude oil IMPORTER?

Honest question? If you feel like trying, I'd love your thoughts on whether AI has the answer to this question totally wrong? Do you reckon it is hallucinating or something, or it's reading Big Oil propaganda and just accepting it as true, or? Do you have some expertise on the subject? If so, be great if you wanted to share and explain what it's getting wrong?

[HesNotHere]

7. Even if this was a viable strategy (it's not)....

Why should the US completely screw the world by carelessly lobbing bombs, and then zig zag around to absolutely try to avoid the inescapable fallout? Its like loving electing lunatics for your 401Ks while skirting the consequences. At some point the merry-go-round is going to have to stop you know.