1. Congress has ended lousy oil export ban

We could soon see progress on a pressing economic issue that would benefit Texas and the rest of the nation immensely — the lifting of the oil export ban.

“The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources will meet within the next two weeks to consider lifting the 40-year-old ban on exporting crude oil,” The Hill newspaper reported on Friday. “Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said her panel will vote before the August recess, scheduled to start Aug. 7, on a bill that includes oil exports and state revenue sharing for offshore oil and natural gas drilling.”

Congressman Joe Barton, R-Texas, has filed a companion bill in the House.

“Sen. Murkowski has long advocated lifting the oil export ban, arguing that it is outdated and that ending it would help the nation’s economy and reduce the power of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC,” The Hill explains. “Oil producers, amid historically low domestic prices, have endorsed the idea, which would open a much larger market for their product.”

The benefits to Texas would be immense. That’s the consensus of experts who spoke at the Tyler Area Energy Summit in March.

Dr. Tom Tunstall is research director at the Institute for Economic Development at the University of Texas at San Antonio, and he told attendees there’s an abundance of crude oil that has been sent to refineries along the Gulf of Mexico — but they’re operating at capacity. He called for an end to the 1970s policy that bans the export of crude oil.

“The shale revolution was completely unexpected,” he said. “We expected to increase imports of oil. But because of shale, we’re choking on crude oil at the Gulf.”

There’s a simple solution — lift the ban, he said.

“The 40-year-old ban on crude oil exports has been unnecessary, increasingly arbitrary, unproductive and has outlived its usefulness,” he said.

Barton and Democrat Congressman Henry Cuellar made that case recently in Roll Call.

“The advantages of lifting the ban on crude oil exports are not just theoretical talking points discussed in the halls of Congress, but rather supported by a large and growing body of research by government agencies, academic institutions and think tanks across the political spectrum,” they wrote. “The latest is a study released by the Harvard Business School and the Boston Consulting Group. It highlights the obvious benefits lifting the ban will have on American families and businesses, our economy and global allies.”

There would be some immediate benefits, they said.

“First, lifting the ban will lower, not raise, domestic gasoline prices,” Barton and Cuellar wrote. “This is perhaps the top issue raised by many of our colleagues who are understandably concerned with how a change in policy could affect prices at the pump back home. But numerous studies have shown lifting the ban would put downward pressure on domestic gasoline prices.”

One study by Columbia University says lifting the ban “could save consumers as much as 12-cents-per-gallon and a number of other studies that reached similar conclusions.”

It’s time to lift that ban.