The Oil Industry Is About to Get a Big Gift from Congress

When Congress emerges on the other side of the annual scrum of budget-building, the oil and gas industry is poised to pick up a major win.  The decades-old oil export ban — which was developed to protect American consumers and support energy independence — is unlikely to survive into the new year.

The ban is expected to be lifted in a rider attached to the omnibus spending bill — which is stuffed annually with environmental cuts and attacks that can’t otherwise get passed — due Friday.  Environmentalists and consumer advocates have largely come down against lifting the ban, which they say will increase fossil fuel extraction in the United States and raise oil prices for American consumers.

“This will certainly lead to more drilling,” Radha Adhar, a federal policy representative for the Sierra Club, told ThinkProgress.  Oil Change International, an anti-fossil-fuel group, estimated that lifting the ban will result in 476,000 more barrels per day by 2020.  The American Petroleum Institute (API), which is pushing for a lift to the ban, came up with 500,000. In a political landscape where different interests can come up with very different estimates, it is telling that the two groups converged closely.

According to a report from the Center for American Progress, repealing the ban would result in an additional 515 million metric tons of carbon pollution each year — roughly equal to 108 million more passenger cars or 135 coal-fired power plants.  The increase in extraction — primarily expected to come from fracking — will be accompanied by an increase in transportation from the oil fields to the coast, which means more pipelines and more oil trains, which pose additional environmental threats.

Big Oil is going to get $22 billion in profits because of this.  Twenty-two billion.  It’s absolutely crazy.

And the increased production won’t make the United States any more energy independent.  In fact, American oil refineries are expected to take a hit, as much of the oil will be shipped overseas. Overseas refineries are cheaper — and less-regulated — than American ones.  Rory Houseman, a spokesman for United Steelworkers, told ThinkProgress that domestic refineries need the export ban to stay competitive while still complying with clear air regulations.  “One of the reasons they have been able to afford [clean air regulations] is the oil export ban,” Houseman said in October.

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