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Change! U.S. transforms into net oil exporter for first time in 75 years

Change! U.S. transforms into net oil exporter for first time in 75 years

Welcome to the new normal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BugnfrZlZC4

Legal Insurrection readers might recall when a certain former President said, “We can’t drill our way to lower gas prices.”

Well, it turns out that the Trump administration has transformed the United States into a net oil producer, as it is now exporting more oil than it imports for the first time in 75 years.

The US exported more petroleum than it imported for the first time in decades last week, marking an astonishing if momentary reversal from its longtime status as the world’s largest oil importer.

Net exports of crude oil and petroleum products from the country totalled 211,000 barrels per day in the week ended November 30, the Energy Information Administration said in a report on Thursday. As recently as 2005, US net oil imports averaged more than 12.5m b/d.

The rise of shale oil production, the end of prohibitions on crude oil exports and investments in advanced oil refining capacity have reduced US crude oil imports and also enabled the country to re-export millions of barrels of fuels such as petrol and diesel, some of it processed from imported oil.

The United States has been a net oil importer since 1949 based on statistics from the American Petroleum Institute.

The use of oil-rich shale resources has been a critical factor in this development, and more expansion may be on the horizon.

“We are becoming the dominant energy power in the world,” said Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy & Economic Research. “But, because the change is gradual over time, I don’t think it’s going to cause a huge revolution, but you do have to think that OPEC is going to have to take that into account when they think about cutting.”

…U.S. crude exports are poised to rise even further, with new pipelines from the Permian in the works and at least nine terminals planned that will be capable of loading supertankers. The only facility currently able to load the largest ships, the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, is on pace to load more oil in December than it has in any other month.

The massive Permian may be even bigger than previously thought. The Delaware Basin, the less drilled part of the field, holds more than twice the amount of crude as its sister, the Midland Basin, the U.S. Geological Service said Thursday.

Though the import/export ratio is anticipated to fluctuate for some time, the Trump administration is working diligently to keep the success going. For example, it has targeted two Obama-era environmental policies.

In order to boost both the oil and coal industries, the Trump administration proposes opening up a bird’s wildlife habitat to drilling and mining, as well as removing hurdles to new coal-fired power plant construction.

…The U.S. Interior Department proposed easing Obama-era protections for a bird, the greater sage-grouse, to boost oil drilling and mining across Western states, potentially opening up hundreds of thousands of acres of grouse habitat in states like Colorado and Utah to oil and gas leasing.

Announced by Interior Department Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt, a Colorado native and a former energy lobbyist, the proposal would allow for changes to habitat boundary maps of the chicken-sized prairie fowl—considered by conservationists to be a key indicator species for America’s dwindling sagebrush ecosystem.

How successful has the new approach been? I will let this data point speak for itself.

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Comments

Good frak’n news.

Wonder what Obama will say to take credit for it?

Article is behind pay-wall but headline must be a transient anomaly in import/export data. Quick look at US oil production vs consumption shows projected 2019 production of 11.9 million bpd and consumption of ~20 million bpd.

    rdm in reply to SHV. | December 9, 2018 at 7:34 am

    The people doing the projecting of these things has been spectacularly bad in projecting them.

    MattMusson in reply to SHV. | December 10, 2018 at 10:28 am

    A big part of the problem is that the USA exports a good deal of refined product. So, you have to subtract a lot of crude oil from the input side of the equation.

    The US provides finished products for all of the Carribbean, a large part of South America, and engages is surplus diseil swaps with Europe (usually but not always offset by gasoline imports from Europe.)

The right kind of change. Also, I read, somewhere today, that schools are bringing chocolate milk back to the menu. Expunge all of that treeape food and let’s get about the business of servicing our clients, students, teachers, staff, administrators and regular Americans who want nothing more than to satisfy a hungry appetite.

    The milk is back, but the kids will probably be forced to read mooooochelle’s b.s. book: a diatribe of hate, from an angry affirmative action putz who achieve nothing on her own, was deserving of nothing she received, and angry at everyone but herself for her lack of ability to achieve on her own.

    Typical over-enabled narcissist.

    Close The Fed in reply to NotKennedy. | December 9, 2018 at 4:36 am

    I read they’re bringing back low-fat chocolate milk…. not as good as what a freedom-loving American would prefer, which is chocolate milk, with unadulterated milk.

Ah. That’s great. Thanks, Obama.

…What? If he wants to take credit for expanding fossil fuels and murdering the planet, he’s free to explain that to his Green buddies. And in all seriousness, I’m a fan of substance much more than credit.

DINORightMarie | December 9, 2018 at 1:55 am

I recall many things that the FORMER (I prefer ex-) POTUS said were equally untrue. “If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor,” “Shovel-ready jobs” (which he later admitted “were not so shovel-ready”), “Obamacare will not add one dome to the deficit,” and “Trump will need a magic want for us see 3% GDP growth again” are a few that come to mind.

One I wish had been true: “If I don’t have this done in 3 years (get the economy back on track), then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.”

If only.

Sane America: Yay!

Leftist America: Boo!

I wish we did Gen IV nuclear instead of this.

    TrickyRicky in reply to broomhandle. | December 9, 2018 at 11:27 am

    I second the support for nuclear, but until then, and even after, if nukes can be sold to an uninformed and unscientific public….. drill, baby, drill. Keep ’em turning to the right.

      I’d support it a lot more if we weren’t dependent on Russia for uranium.

        broomhandle in reply to txvet2. | December 9, 2018 at 10:51 pm

        We don’t need to be dependent on Russia for Uranium, and besides, if the Thorium fuel cycle were fully developed there is enough worldwide to power the entire globe with a much larger population than we have now at a first-world standard of living for a very, very long time.

Remember we would have been exporting oil a lot sooner if Clinton hadn’t vetoed Anwar. 1.5 million barrels a day by 2005. Alas….

    We didn’t dare harm that “pristine” environment

    But it’s just dandy to doze mountain tops and cover them with wind turbines

      KakarotWasTaken in reply to murkyv. | December 9, 2018 at 9:11 pm

      Heck, if we don’t keep putting up wind turbines, how will we get to keep killing all those Bald Eagles and bats and other critters.