End the Crude Oil Export Ban And Fix Our Nation's Roads and Bridges

The United States can end the export ban and simultaneously stabilize the insolvent Highway Trust Fund. Bridges are collapsing and 18-wheelers are falling into potholes the size of Rhode Island, and we complain that Congress has not raised the gasoline tax since 1993. That tree-hugging pit of Marxism, the US Chamber of Commerce, has called for a gas tax increase.

IHS Energy, a consulting group headed by energy writer and wonk Daniel Yergin, today released a report advocating for an end to the domestic crude oil export ban. The IHS report, downloadable from this IHS page, reports that lifting a crude oil ban would create an average of almost 400,000 jobs between 2016 and 2030. Surprisingly, ending the ban would lower gasoline prices by an average of 8 cents per gallon. This is because US gasoline prices are set by global crude oil prices not domestic production costs, and lifting a US export ban would add to the world supply by a significant amount. The only losers would be domestic refiners such as Valero, which has opposed lifting the ban. Boo hoo.

So here is an idea: lift the ban, and at the same time impose a gas tax of 8 cents per gallon. The gasoline consumer is no worse off, because the gas tax only counteracts the lower gas prices resulting from ending the export ban, and generate about $9.7 billion annually for the Highway Trust Fund (135 billion gallons of gasoline were consumed in the United States last year, 13 billion of which were ethanol). Ideally, the crude oil export ban should be accompanied by an $9 per ton of CO2 carbon tax, but that's another story.

Enacted as part of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975, the crude oil export ban was meant to secure energy supplies in the wake of the 1973 oil embargo that shocked an energy-complacent United States. The actual legislation just provides that "[t]he President may, by rule, under such terms and Export conditions as he determines to be appropriate and necessary to carry out the purposes of this Act, restrict exports of -- ... coal, petroleum products, natural gas, or petrochemical feedstocks. .." Section 103 goes on to provide that the "President shall exercise the authority provided for in Exemption, subsection (a) to promulgate a rule prohibiting the export of crude oil and natural gas produced in the United States, except that the President may, ... exempt from such prohibition such crude oil or natural gas exports which he determines to be consistent with the national interest..." So it is pretty clear that the ban is a matter of executive discretion. It is just that Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama have all decided that exporting oil was not in the national interest.

But that was 1975, and the United States is now one of the major oil producers of the world today. Much of the EPCA's provisions, aimed at insulating the United States from volatile global energy prices, still seem useful today, like the Strategic Oil Reserve and fuel efficiency standards for motor vehicles. But lifting the crude oil ban now has bipartisan interest, with Senators Wyden and Cantwell joining Murkowski in calling for at least consideration to ending the ban.