US running out of room to store oil; price collapse next?
http://news.yahoo.com/us-running-room-s ... nance.html
For the past seven weeks, the United States has been producing and importing an average of 1 million more barrels of oil every day than it is consuming. That extra crude is flowing into storage tanks, especially at the country's main trading hub in Cushing, Oklahoma, pushing U.S. supplies to their highest point in at least 80 years, the Energy Department reported last week.
If this keeps up, storage tanks could approach their operational limits, known in the industry as "tank tops," by mid-April and send the price of crude — and probably gasoline, too — plummeting.
The new oil being produced is light, sweet crude, which is a type many U.S. refineries are not designed to process. Oil companies can't just get rid of it by sending it abroad, because crude exports are restricted by federal law.
U.S. oil giants want Congress to lift export ban on crude
Read more here:
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2015/03/03 ... rylink=cpy
WASHINGTON — As the number of U.S. drilling rigs plummets by a third and thousands in the industry face layoffs, oil companies are focusing on an effort to convince Congress to lift the longstanding ban on crude oil exports.
“We shouldn’t put domestic producers at a competitive disadvantage by limiting the available markets,” Ryan Lance, CEO of Texas-based ConocoPhillips, told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday.
Scott Sheffield, CEO of Pioneer Natural Resources, also based in Texas, was making the same push Tuesday in front of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Power, arguing the industry’s struggles with low oil prices are worsened because companies aren’t allowed to ship American crude oil to foreign nations
“Why would any policymaker want to risk jeopardizing the current consumer benefits we are experiencing and institute a policy that would benefit only a narrow sector of the economy?” asked Graeme Burnett, board chairman of Monroe Energy, Delta’s refining subsidiary.
The oil export ban was put in place in the wake of the 1970s Arab oil embargo, ostensibly to protect Americans from gasoline shortages and price spikes. But oil companies and energy economists argue it’s outdated in an era of enormous U.S. oil and natural gas production.
Hope the U.S lifts the ban. It gives the world alternatives to Gulf oil.