A House panel voted to end the nation’s decades-old ban on exporting crude oil Thursday, adding momentum to a bipartisan drive to lift the 1970s-era restriction and — as one of the first meetings lawmakers scheduled after the end of their five-week recess Monday — an indication of the high priority Republicans have placed on sending U.S.-produced oil overseas.
A House Energy and Commerce Committee subcommittee approved the bill by a voice vote, sending the measure to the full committee for markup as soon as next week.
The vote comes nearly six weeks after the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee also moved to end the export ban July 30, less than a day after House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, threw his support behind lifting the restriction.
READ: [Senate Panel Greenlights Oil Exports, Offshore Drilling, Infrastructure Upgrades]
Oil producers, led by the American Petroleum Institute, have long lobbied to end the ban, which they say would lower gasoline prices by adding more crude to the global market, as well as open potentially lucrative foreign markets for export.
“America is now a global energy superpower, and lawmakers are ready to bring home the economic and security benefits of crude oil exports,” API Executive Vice President Louis Finkel said in a statement. “It’s an important step forward, and we urge House and Senate leaders to continue to make this issue a top priority in the days ahead.”
Environmental groups, by contrast, contend that allowing exports will only increase the world’s reliance on fossil fuels and encourage producers to drill more oil, undercutting international efforts to reduce heat-trapping carbon emissions and slow climate change. U.S. refineries that buy American oil, as well as some of the chemical companies that purchase their refined products, have also opposed ending the ban, arguing it may drive up costs.
“Over the past decade, we’ve cut oil imports to America by nearly half. Repealing this policy would roll the clock back and put our energy future at greater risk by making us more dependent on foreign oil,” Allied Progress, an advocacy group run by Democratic strategist Karl Frisch, said in a statement. “Any Member of Congress who has extolled the virtues of achieving ‘American energy independence’ — nearly all of them — cannot in good faith support repeal.”
ALSO: [Boehner Calls for an End to the Decades-Old Ban on US Oil Exports]
Congress and President Gerald Ford implemented the ban as part of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975. Their goal was to keep as much oil as possible within the U.S. and insulate the country from a volatile international energy market made even more chaotic and costly by the 1967 and 1973 Arab oil embargoes, which were intended to discourage and then punish the U.S. and other foreign nations for supporting Israel in the Six-Day and Yom Kippur wars.
Experts disagree whether the U.S. export ban was effective: While imports of foreign oil dropped through the early 1980s, they rose again through the next two decades. Imports again began falling in 2006, largely the result of the U.S. domestic production boom, but U.S. oil prices remain inextricably linked to prices on the world market.
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Bill to Reverse Ban on U.S. Oil Exports Advances in House originally appeared on usnews.com