The Patriot Post® · U.S. Begins Oil Exports

The first U.S. oil tanker bearing U.S. oil for export arrived in France two weeks ago, an event that was not lost on Russia’s propaganda news agency, RT. For the first time since the 1970s, American oil is being sold on the international market. While the flow of oil is only a trickle, for Russia and its oil dependent economy, this is worrisome news. It had seen Saudi Arabia lessen its hold on the European market for the last few decades, and the former Soviet state is now seeing renewed competition at a time when Iran started selling its black gold and the price per barrel dropped below $30.

This has the potential for huge positives in the American economy, writes Heritage Foundation’s Katie Tubb and Andrew Wilford. “The arrival of this shipment to Europe, the first unrestricted since the 1970s, heralds the start of an enormous benefit to the economy,” they write. “Lifting the ban will supply more oil to the market and generate more opportunities both for the American oil sector and the industries that support it. Getting rid of the crude oil ban could add as many as 380,000 new jobs to the U.S. economy as well as increase the U.S. GDP by more than $38 billion by 2020.”

Furthermore, let’s be clear on what this means. The Mercatus Center crunched the data and found that the industries of petroleum and coal products manufacturing and oil and gas extraction were two of the top ten most regulated industries in the United States in 2014. One of the most regulated industry in the nation, the one that had been losing jobs due to low prices and high regulation, just got a boost from the free market.