Oil Exports

Floor Speech

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, when we talk about national security
issues and the vulnerabilities we have as a nation, I can think of no
other area where we face such challenges and yet such opportunities
when it comes to our energy assets and how we can utilize our energy
policies at their intersection points with our national security
policies.

The inability of the United States to export oil is a vulnerability
to our nation. At a time when we have risen to be the world's top
producer of oil, our outdated 1970s-era ban on oil exports is causing
us to miss out on a significant economic- and security-related
benefits.

The good news is we can change this. It is within our power to change
this, and that is why I have come to the floor this afternoon.

Here is a fact: The United States is the only advanced Nation that
prohibits crude oil exports. We are the only one. Countries such as
Australia, Denmark, Norway, the United Kingdom, Canada, and even New
Zealand all allow for both imports and exports, just like the normal
trade in any other commodity. It is distinctly weird that we would
prohibit our own exports.

We are also in a position where our friends and our trading partners
are openly asking us for assistance. They are coming to us and saying:
Hey, can you help? We are your friends. We are your allies. You have
the resources.

The world has changed dramatically. We have new alliances. We have
new threats. We have new hopes. We have new fears. It is my own hope
that while the world may have changed, our Nation's role as a global
leader has not eroded. This is an area where we have an opportunity to
prove it has not eroded.

Our energy renaissance is a new thing, and sometimes it takes time to
understand the implications of new things, of changes, but here is
where we have been. We have already held about half a dozen hearings on
the topic of oil exports in the House and in the Senate since last
January. I introduced this subject last January 2014, and I said at
that time that 2014 was going to be the year of the report, where we
would seek out the experts, we would ask the think tanks to weigh in on
this issue, and so they did. The reports that came out were numerous,
they were considered, they were thoughtful, and they were all very
helpful. Reports came out of the Brookings Institution, Columbia
University, the Center for a New American Security--too many to even
list here. The individual experts who are in favor of allowing oil
exports are also quite impressive. These are people whom we look to for
leadership in a host of different areas.

There was a piece in the Wall Street Journal that I ask unanimous
consent be printed in the Record, penned by Leon Panetta and Stephen
Hadley, the Defense Secretary in the Obama administration and the
National Security Advisor in the Bush administration. They wrote a
piece that was entitled ``The Oil-Export Ban Harms National Security.''
It is well-founded, well-written, and to the point.

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Ms. MURKOWSKI. It said directly: We keep this ban in place, this
decades- old ban. It hurts us as a nation. It harms us from a national security
perspective, not to mention the benefits that oil exports will provide
when it comes to increased production and increased jobs benefits to
our economy.

There are other folks out there who have also weighed in. Larry
Summers, formerly the Treasury Secretary for President Clinton and also
Director of the National Economic Council for President Obama, said
this about lifting the ban on oil exports: ``The merits are as clear as
the merits with respect to any significant public policy issue that I
have ever encountered.'' This is a guy many people looked to for
leadership in a host of different areas. The merits are as clear as the
merits with respect to any significant public policy issue he has
encountered.

Tom Donilon, formerly the National Security Advisor to President
Obama, has said that allowing exports ``will increase diversity of
supply, increase competition, reduce volatility and lower prices in
global markets.''

The questions we needed to ask about oil exports have been asked, and
answered favorably. Independent experts have studied what would happen
if we lift the ban and almost universally encouraged us to move forward
to lift this outdated, outmoded policy.

This is not a partisan issue. My colleague from North Dakota is on
the floor today. We have introduced bipartisan legislation to remove
this ban. This is something which is simply in the best interest of the
United States, both in terms of our economic strength and in terms of
our national security.

I am here today to tell our colleagues, to repeat and remind our
colleagues that the time to legislate on oil exports is now. I think
the bill we have in front of us, the National Defense Authorization Act
being led by our friend and colleague from Arizona, is the perfect
vehicle on which to advance this. Therefore, I ask unanimous consent to
call up and make pending my amendment No. 1594, related to crude oil
exports.

Mr. President, I withhold the request to make this amendment pending
at this point in time, but if I may proceed to speak to three quick
components to the amendment.

The first requires the Department of Energy to assess the impact that
lifting sanctions on Iran would have on global oil markets. We would
likely see higher Iranian oil exports, even as American producers are
prohibited from accessing global markets. So our friends in Japan,
India, South Korea, and elsewhere would continue importing from Iran,
in part because they cannot get the crude oil from us. They cannot
import from us. That situation is simply unacceptable. We would be
lifting sanctions on Iranian oil while maintaining them on American
oil.

I have made this point and I have repeated it before: Leaving in
place the oil export ban on U.S. producers while at the same time
sanctions are relieved on Iranian producers effectively sanctions U.S.
oil production.

There was an article in Reuters this week that revealed that India is
now importing record volumes of oil directly from Iran. Another from
May showed record oil exports out of Iraq to global markets. Yet
another shows the highest volumes of oil exports from Saudi Arabia in
10 years. So the fact is that we are simply not competing.

The second component of my amendment says that 30 days after
completion of this report, all U.S. crude oil may be exported on the
same basis as the regulations and law currently allow for exports of
petroleum products. Today, we can export gasoline, we can export
diesel, we can export jet fuel--really, any refined product we can
export without a license--but we cannot export crude oil. It does not
make sense, and it is high time we resolve that inconsistency.

The third component of my amendment preserves the authorities of the
President to block exports during emergencies, during a national
security crisis, and so forth.

So what we have done is we have borrowed language on these
authorities directly from the legislation from 20 years ago that
authorized oil exports from Alaska's North Slope, which was a measure
that passed the Senate on a bipartisan vote, 74 to 25, and was signed
into law by President Clinton. What we had over 20 years ago was an
overwhelmingly favorable vote well before this American energy
renaissance began.

I find the whole idea that oil exports would still be prohibited a
little mind-boggling. The Commerce Department keeps a list of
commodities that are in short supply. They call this the short supply
controls. Historically, these controls were generally not blanket
prohibitions; they were on items such as aluminum, copper, iron and
steel scrap, diamond bort and powder, nickel selenium, and the polio
vaccine--not blanket prohibitions, just bits of them. Only three items
remain on the short supply controls list. One of them--you guessed it--
is crude oil, the second is western red cedar, and the third is horse
for slaughter. There is also a small caveat here that prohibits exports
from the Naval Petroleum Reserves, but, really, the list is pretty
short. There are three things: crude oil, western cedar trees, and
horse for slaughter. Clearly our policy needs to be modernized.

We see many parts of the world in a state of unrest. Many parts of
the world are seemingly on fire. America and American energy need to be
ready to render vital assistance to our friends who are counting on us
to demonstrate that global leadership. This is our chance, and I look
forward to further discussion on the floor as we move this NDAA measure
forward.

I encourage colleagues to look at this amendment, look at the merits
of the reports that have gone down in the past year, and look to
updating this very outdated policy that is holding us back as a nation.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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