US producers hope to profit from exports

摘要

US crude producers are stepping up their lobbying to overturn the effective decades-long ban on exports,as they see potential profits slip through their fingers while US crude prices are discounted by rising local supply. At a Senate committee hearing last month,leading Bakken producer Continental Resources chief executive Harold Hamm highlighted US supply security benefits that producers say will come with a lifting of export controls. “National security and oil exports are not mutually exclu-sive—they go hand-in-hand.The authorisation of oil exports promotes investment in additional energy resource and infrastructure development at home,enabling our nation to better control its own destiny.” Marathon Oil chief executive Lee Tillman says:“It is encourag-ing to us to see the crude export issue being out there and discussed openly now.If you rewind back not so long ago,that was not the case.We were hard-pressed to get any traction around that.”