Lifting U.S. crude export ban would help counter Russia- oil CEO
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/ ... 2T20140326
“While opening LNG exports is a noble goal and one that we as a country are actively working towards, the fact is the infrastructure to undertake large scale overnight LNG exports does not currently exist,” Harold Hamm, the chairman and CEO of Continental Resources Inc, will tell lawmakers at a House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee hearing slated for 10 am/1400 GMT on Wednesday.
“If we want to have an overnight impact on today’s global events, we can immediately begin exporting crude oil, which does not have the same infrastructure constraints” as LNG, he will say, according to prepared remarks.
It’s easy to demonstrate the “overnight impact” that Mr. Hamm is talking about. Here is a link to the latest four week running average US supply data from the EIA:
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_sum_sndw_dcus_nus_4.htm
If we just focus on the imported crude oil supply for US refineries over the last four weeks, we (gross) exported 64,000 bpd and had (gross) imports of 7,337,000 bpd. So net imports of crude oil were:
Gross Imports – Gross Exports = Net Imports
7,337,000 – 64,000 = 7,273,000 bpd
Let’s assume that we boost gross exports by 1,000,000 bpd, and to offset for the decline in crude oil supply to US refineries we then boost gross imports by 1,000,000 bpd. Net imports of crude oil would then be:
8,337,000 – 1,064,000 = 7,273,000 bpd