Landmark Day For Big Oil

[Shiranu]

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/12/16/3732728/oil-export-ban-lifted/

In a blow to environmental activists, lawmakers agreed late Tuesday to lift the 40-year-old oil export ban in a budget deal for the coming year. In exchange, the wind and solar industries will receive some market certainty, with tax credits extensions for the next five years.

Republicans have been pushing hard this year for an end to the ban, which was established to protect American energy security after the oil embargo of the 1970s. In recent years, with the rise of fracking and American production of light, sweet crude, the international and national prices of oil have become imbalanced.

Oil production is expected to get a big boost from lifting the ban. Oil Change International estimates it could add an additional 467,000 barrels a day, while the American Petroleum Institute estimates up to 500,000.

...While the oil industry is certainly expected to benefit from the ban’s repeal, American consumers are not expected to reap much advantage. According to analysis from the federal Energy Information Administration, if the ban were repealed, oil and gas prices for consumers will either slightly decrease (at higher domestic production levels) or remain the same (at current levels). In essence, what we pay for gas depends more on the global market than it does on one trade policy.

It's cool I didn't need a clean Earth to live on anyways.

[Baruch]

Don't ask how politics get done, or the making of sausage ;-)

[GrinningYMIR]

Mixed feeling on this.

More money and cheaper fuel eventually since the global market will go down, and this is our fuel so selling it will hurt us in the future

[stromboli]

Ultimately by exporting oil they will drive the market down (which I think is the plan) and bankrupt smaller producers they haven't bankrupted already. But cheap gas doesn't stop the drive to build electric cars (Ford is now) and the demographic represented by the millennials is moving away from petroleum fuels, hopefully.

Bunch of old white Republicans buddying up to old white oil company owners doesn't necessarily mean the end of the world, but until everybody gets on board to fight global warming, we are headed for even bigger problems than we already have. 

[Jack89]

Ultimately by exporting oil they will drive the market down (which I think is the plan) and bankrupt smaller producers they haven't bankrupted already. But cheap gas doesn't stop the drive to build electric cars (Ford is now) and the demographic represented by the millennials is moving away from petroleum fuels, hopefully.

I seriously considered buying an electric car when gas prices hit their peak, but they were entirely too expensive, so I bought a little car with really good gas mileage instead.  Now that gas is cheap, I don't even think about buying an electric car.  What's the point? 

Bunch of old white Republicans buddying up to old white oil company owners doesn't necessarily mean the end of the world, but until everybody gets on board to fight global warming, we are headed for even bigger problems than we already have. 

There's that anti-white rhetoric again (rolls eyes).

[Baruch]

True ... Black men want to be just like White men too.  Maybe better to just say "pale complexioned masculine types in a First World country with plenty of money and a good car, bitch" ... but it takes so much work to type it!