First U.S. Oil Export Leaves Port, Marking End of 40-Year Ban

[Purveyor]

Source: Bloomberg

December 31, 2015 — 5:26 PM EST

The first U.S. shipment of crude oil to an overseas buyer departed a Texas port on Thursday, just weeks after a 40-year ban on most such exports was lifted.

The Theo T tanker has left NuStar Energy LP’s dockside facility in Corpus Christi, Texas, along the western shore of the Gulf of Mexico, Mary Rose Brown, a spokeswoman for NuStar, said in an e-mail. The ship is carrying a cargo of oil and condensate from ConocoPhillips’s wells in south Texas that was sold to Swiss trading house Vitol Group.

A campaign by oil explorers including Continental Resources Inc., Chevron Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp. to lift the 1970s-era export prohibition culminated in a Dec. 18 congressional decision to end the ban.

Vitol, which owns stakes in refineries from northern Europe to Australia, has a second cargo of U.S.-sourced crude scheduled to depart a Houston port within days.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-31/first-u-s-oil-export-leaves-port-marking-end-of-40-year-ban

[mtasselin]

1. get ready

Get ready because as time goes by and in the near future the price of gas will go up and for many other reasons as well. War will be a big factor and the economy will be another, but the important thing to remember is that this was brought to you by that asshole congressman out of Wisconsin by the name of lyin ryan.

[forest444]

2. Exactly.

This will probably also mean domestic shortages in the not-too-distant future, as the awl bidness increasingly reorients toward the export market (where margins are better).

And if, as you predict with good reason, oil prices surge next year, all bets are off. They'll want to export every drop, the treasonous bastards.

Happy New Year, mtasselin. All the best for 2016.

[trillion]

12. I think climate change will fix this sooner than later. Ie. we'll be in so many disasters we stop

entertaining the thought of fossil fuels.

[valerief]

15. But the rich can always escape the bad weather. nt

[Geronimoe]

3. Peak oil

Here in PA, libraries are reducing hours opened due to lack of funding. The politicians refuse to tax natural gas extraction.

[alfredo]

4. Refinery workers are unionized. Less work to do, less workers needed.

[KoKo]

5. Woo Hoo....Give our last Resources Away!

Good for Corporations and the Oligarchs...and they've "Got Us Covered."

And, WHO voted to give away our Last Oil for Free? Don't "We the People" have a Right to Ask? Since "Peak Oil" was such a hot topic...not so long ago and yet there's so much oil available and still "untapped" that countries can't find enough ways to sell off these resources for their own future and survival?

And there are so many happy that Wind and Solar will be the result of this Sell off of "Countries Natural Resources." But, we all know that "W & S" are NOT the Total Answer but a complementary answer to what we were told was dwindling Oil and Nat Gas before Fracking and the new discoveries in the Middle East and elsewhere have come on board.

So.....what is going on?

[Marty McGraw]

6. wow...

at the speed of any other for of legislation, or de-legislated, why does this not come to a surprise how quickly it was enacted upon. Fuckin' Greed!

[reACTIONary]

7. Sorry to be a contrarian, but....

.... allowing the price of oil to rise will help to make alternative energy sources competitive, so I'm not against this.

[Purveyor]

8. I take then that you aren't living paycheck to paycheck and

Can afford higher energy costs?

So many others aren't in such a position.

[reACTIONary]

9. That's true, i do not live paycheck...

.... to paycheck. Therefore I do not need nor do I deserve a fuel or energy subsidy. But the export provisions GAVE me one despite that.

Instead of a general subsidy that prices alternatives out of the market, I would prefer a need based subsidy and one that is not oil or gas specific so that it could also be applied to alternatives, not just fossil fuel.

Honestly, I don't know exactly how such a program would be implemented, but those would be the objectives i would support .

[NickB79]

22. Most of the world's population is damned either way

Expensive fossil fuels now ensure the poor suffer today.

Cheap fossil fuels now ensure billions will suffer from climate change in the (not-so-distant anymore) future.

Pick your poison.

[TexasBushwhacker]

13. +1 n/t

[Midnight Writer]

10. Drill Baby Drill has won

Remember our conservative brethren's goal of "energy self sufficiency"? We have achieved that under, of all things, the anti energy Obama administration.

So naturally, we should now export our natural resources, selling them to other countries so that we can have energy shortages again in our own. Oh, and of course we will further damage our beautiful lands in the worship of petro dollars.

All hail Mammon!

[leveymg]

20. Here's how it was supposed to work: Alaska gas piped south to Vancouver tar sands

where that relatively clean gas is used to cook shale oil (extremely dirty) out of the ground, which in turn is piped south via the TCP to refineries in the US which, in turn, distribute some product as heating oil (dirty) and diesel fuel (dirty) to the East Coast and Midwest. The remainder is piped and exported via Gulf ports.

What's going to end up happening is a westward pipeline will be built from Vancouver to soon to be expanded Pacific Canadian ports for direct shipment of (largely Chinese owned) Vancover shale oil by Chinese tankers to China and other Asian consumer countries. This is far more economical than transshipping it through U.S. refineries or directly to tankers waiting in the Gulf.

[GreydeeThos]

11. We can't burn the oil here fast enough to change the climate

So let's send oil to foreign countries so they can burn it and raise the CO2 level.

Money Rules!

[malthaussen]

14. And the ruling class smiles

They've been waiting a long time for this. $$$

-- Mal

[YOHABLO]

16. At a time when places like India and China are having to crack down on

cars because of air pollution that is suffocating their citizens .. I do live paycheck to paycheck, I paid a $l.50 a gallon at the Kroger with my gas points I collect monthly from shopping. That's the lowest I've paid for gas in well over 20 years. Oh hell, can't have that now can we? Better make way for it going up to $3.00+ real soon. They've got to keep us down and in our place you know. Money, money, money, must seem funny in the rich man's world.

[tsites]

17. To put things into perspective

I hear a lot of whining about gas prices. To put things into perspective, let's go back to the good-ole pre-embargo days. When I was in high school in south Texas I never paid more than $0.20 per gallon for self serve gasoline. I imagine few people on this forum can remember paying less. According to the the US bureau of labor statics, inflation over that period is about 650% meaning due to inflation alone we should expect to pay no less than $1.30 per gallon to have stayed the same. Over this same period fuel efficiency has improved overall by about about 75%, meaning that on average I can go 1.75 times further on a gallon of gas such that I would have to pay over $2.28 per gallon for it to be more expensive per mile traveled than it was when I was in high school in 1969.

Given that most people in most parts of the country were not as fortunate as I and were likely paying closer to $0.30 a gallon, and if the USBLS significantly low-balls inflation (which I think there is evidence they do) such that the 650% they report is probably closer to 1000% over this same period and given the 75% improvement in fuel efficiency is only an average and does not reflect the significantly greater choices we have for high mileage vehicles today than we did then (meaning that most of us who are concerned with mileage have gone from the 16 mpg vehicle we drove in 1969 to an at least a 38 mpg one today) the $2.28 above is an unrealistically low comparison point. A more realistic number would probably be closer to $7.00 per gallon. So when I hear people complain about gas prices, I don't have much sympathy. Gas is cheap and has been for many years. The only time it has been expensive was in the period immediately after the 1972 oil embargo when prices tripled and again during the Iran crisis in 1979 when they doubled. Prices adjusted for inflation actually declined from 1980 to 1999. Our biggest problem since then has been volatility, the actual cost peaked around the end of 2007 when pump prices reached around $4.00 per gallon - but this was still cheap!

[stuffmatters]

18. Obama and the Dems could have gotten so much more for this surrender

This is one of the hugest gifts to the Repubs and their big oil donors in my lifetime. Why in the world, as long as Obama wasn't going to veto it out of the budget ransom taking (the new "bill passing" strategy for hideous corporate bills), why why didn't he and the Dems extract more from the Rebus in exchange. I know there was some tax credits etc, but nothing fundamental. And lifting this ban is majorally fundamental to Big Oil and, of course, the Kochs. Think how much their net worth went up on just this.

Why wasn't more demanded of the Repubs for this in trade...like scrapping the cap on social security to insure it's solvency in perpetuity for future generations and giving medicare and Americans the ability to negotiate/reimport drugs & prices. As long as the Repubs and their corporate owners are given this ginormous gift that further endangers generations of Americans, why didn't they demand at least something that will secure old age security and accessible drug prices for those same future generations.

I hate this bill & I despise the current unconstitutional method Repubs now get their most destructive bills passed as riders on budget, spending must pass legislation. The Dems have allowed this to become the new legislative normal is reprehensible. But to not even extract some huge and fundamental legislation in exchange for surrender of such a profound generational goal of the Repubs Big Pollution Owners is astonishing to me.

[JackRiddler]

19. Oklahoma is shaking with joy.

Or it's shaking with something, as America's new top earthquake zone.

http://www.koco.com/weather/oklahoma-ha-more-earthquakes-in-2015-than-all-of-continental-us-combined/37209902

It's great that we've solved the oil and gas shortage by using massive explosives - an American specialty - to lay waste to useless wildnerness, aquifers, mountaintops, and ocean floors. This can be done forever without any consequences whatsoever. Take that, environmental doomsayers!

[tabasco]

21. Increasing our dependency on Saudi Arabia and foreign oil.

Thanks, republicans.