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United States spending bill lifts 40-year ban on crude oil exports

Lifting the export ban improves the future outlook for North Dakota, which produces light, sweet crude oil that most American refineries aren’t created to process, said Eugene Graner, president of Heartland Investor Services in Bismarck.

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The group highlighted a bipartisan agreement apparently struck in U.S. Congress this week, which would lift a longstanding ban on American oil exports, noting that the White House has signaled it will not veto such a deal. Chevron Corp gained 0.5 percent, and Marathon Oil Corp rose 0.3 percent.


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Due to a global glut in oil supplies, lifting the ban is not expected to lead to significant shipments for months or even years but it could give crude producers the increased flexibility they coveted. Numerous U.S. oil producers have already curbed their drilling operations and some could go out of business because of the current low prices.


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While many Democrats, including President Obama, have opposed lifting the ban, a drop in oil prices, which briefly touched almost 11-year lows this week below $40 a barrel, helped ease their worries that doing so would boost gasoline prices for consumers. Above, an oil pump near Alexander, N.D, in September.

The comments were in response to a deal reached late Tuesday that could overturn the decades-old ban on oil exports.

Oil producers including ConocoPhillips and Continental Resources Inc. had lobbied in favour of repeal, while some independent refiners, such as PBF Energy Inc., said they may be harmed by an end to the crude-export restrictions.

Economists says exports could help the economy by further reducing fuel prices, by encouraging investment in production and shipping and by creating jobs.

Today, the world has too much oil – thanks in part to America’s shale oil boom.

On the other hand, United States refiners are unhappy about the lifting of the crude oil export ban. This week, crude prices fell to below $35 per barrel, down from more than $100 per barrel just previous year. Crude oil in storage is at 80-year highs, approaching 500 million barrels. Yet we don’t think that the immediate effects will be great on prices, unfortunately for Louisiana’s oil patch. That is part of an “all of the above” energy policy, so we hope that oil patch senators and congressmen will also see those as positive elements in the big omnibus bill.

Lowey said it would be hard for some Democrats to support it.

Technology. U.S. energy companies have developed new techniques that have dramatically increased oil production from fields once thought to be virtually empty or unreachable.

Republicans made lifting the ban a priority and swapped it for measures Democrats wanted to reduce carbon emissions and protect the environment.

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Eric de Place, Sightline’s policy director, said the renewable energy incentives do have some environmental benefit.

The oil export ban was imposed during the oil embargo of the 1970s to ease oil shortages