Oil Bosses Descend on Washington to Lift Export Ban

Chief executives from the lobbying group Producers for American Crude Oil Exports, or PACE, met with White House senior energy policy adviser Brian Deese March 11 seeking a rollback of the U.S. oil export ban imposed after the 1973 Arab oil embargo, according to two people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions weren’t public.

Producers are eager to lift the ban because oil in the U.S. is selling for about $10 less than the global benchmark. The meeting preceded a report Friday by the International Energy Agency that record U.S. crude supplies may soon test the limits of the nation’s storage capacity, further threatening prices.

“We’ve had a series of very productive meetings with senators from both parties and the administration and look forward to continuing those conversations in the months ahead,” said George Baker, PACE’s executive director, in a statement that didn’t outline what the talks included.

Executives also met on Capitol Hill with aides to Senator Lisa Murkowski, chairwoman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, has publicly backed lifting the ban on U.S. oil exports and is working on a broad rewrite of U.S. energy laws.

Via washpost.bloomberg.com

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