Lift the ban, cook the climate

It’s not often environmental organizations and the American Petroleum Institute (API) agree. But, when it comes to the crude oil export ban, we begin from a remarkably similar starting point: removing the longstanding ban would result in increased oil drilling in the United States. 

Recent analysis from Oil Change International has shown that removing the ban would result in increased oil drilling on the order of 476,000 barrels per day (bpd) by 2020, similar to API’s own estimate of 500,000 bpd. But the agreements start and end there. For API and its members, ever-increasing oil production and the profits that come with it seems to always be the goal, come hell or high water. For us at Oil Change International, protection of our communities and our climate is paramount. No bump in quarterly earnings for an oil company should ever take precedence over the imperative to tackle the greatest crisis in generations. 

{mosads}U.S. oil producers want an end to the export ban in order to gain access to international markets, which would raise the price they receive for their crude oil. Their rationale is obvious: they seek to increase their profits. The industry claims that eliminating the ban will also result in benefits to the consumer. They hail potential gas prices reductions that could come from lifting the ban, while ignoring the fact that the few cents per gallon potential decrease looks remarkably unimpressive when placed in the context of a highly volatile global market.  

Estimates reviewed by the U.S. Government Accountability Office range from essentially zero to a maximum decrease of 13 cents per gallon. That 13 cents, if it even materializes, would amount to less than 8% of the $1.67 per gallon drop in average U.S. gasoline price experienced last year. What we really need is to wean ourselves off our addiction to oil and to stop bowing to the whims of an ever-volatile oil market. 

On the other hand, the hazardous increases in oil production that could come with the removal or weakening of the crude export ban presents much greater dangers that simply cannot be ignored. Everyday, dangerous fracking wells, sprawling rail lines carrying so-called “bomb trains” and a network of leaking pipelines threaten our communities with spills and explosions with far-too-frequent regularity. If the highest estimates of increased oil production are realized, eliminating the crude oil export ban could lead to as much as a doubling of crude-by-rail traffic from today’s already perilous levels. 

But what’s more, unchecked oil production in the United States imperils us all due to our deepening climate crisis. The world’s top scientists have shown that the vast majority of known fossil fuels must remain unburned if we are to avoid the most devastating and disruptive impacts of unchecked climate change, and yet our Congress is considering unleashing a barrage of new oil drilling. 

While the crude oil export ban is not a climate policy, lifting it would hinder, not help, progress towards the goal of climate protection. As the president has said in his climate test for the Keystone XL pipeline, if a project or policy exacerbates the problem of greenhouse gas emissions, it should be rejected. Given the conditions of the current global oil market and Saudi Arabia and OPEC’s recent policy of focusing on maintaining market share rather than maintaining price, additional U.S. oil production will almost certainly lead to an increase in global oil on the market and thus an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Eliminating the export ban will harm the climate by incentivizing the extraction of more oil that should otherwise be left in the ground, and by stimulating oil demand by raising oil supply. 

If members of Congress do not deny the science of climate change, the last thing they should do is encourage more fossil fuel production. In fact a gradual phase down in U.S. – and global – oil production over the next 35 years in line with a climate safe scenario is exactly what we need in order to avoid catastrophic climate change. 

We have dug ourselves an enormous climate hole that will take tremendous resolve to claw ourselves out of. Removing the crude export ban only serves to dig that hole deeper. It fails the climate test and would be a step in the wrong direction for this nation’s climate and energy policy.

Turnbull is campaigns director with Oil Change International, an environmental organization focused on identifying and overcoming political and economic barriers to the clean energy transition.