Big oil claimed boosting fossil fuel exports would be a boon to U.S. consumers, but researchers say the “economic instability and damage to local communities and the planet created by this rapid export expansion are only now becoming clear.”

In 2015, fossil fuel industry executives and lobbyists adamantly claimed that lifting a 40-year-old ban on U.S. oil exports would benefit consumers in the form of lower prices at the pump.

Environmentalists and consumer advocates disagreed, warning gasoline costs would likely rise for the sake of higher industry profits.

[pullquote]”The fossil fuel industry has reoriented itself to prioritize profits from consumers overseas, jacking up prices for American consumers.”[/pullquote]

A report published Monday—nearly seven years after former President Barack Obama signed a measure that lifted the export ban—makes the case that recent events have vindicated opponents of the industry-led repeal effort as gas prices rise and fossil fuel corporations celebrate record profits.

“The Russian invasion of Ukraine has made clear that the boom in U.S. production and exports has not removed Americans from the wild swings of energy markets,” reads the report released by consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, part of the coalition that mobilized against ending the export ban originally enacted in 1975.

“Indeed, with the U.S. economy now more tightly interlinked with global energy markets, consumers are even more vulnerable to international supply shocks and punishing price swings,” the report argues. “In the long run, we must as a planet wean ourselves from our dangerous dependence on fossil fuels that have sowed turmoil and chaos, as has been so evident during this tumultuous year.”

The new report details how the U.S. has gone from exporting “nearly zero liquefied natural gas” to becoming “the world’s largest natural gas exporter” in the years since Republican lawmakers and Obama teamed up to repeal the export ban, unleashing pollution in frontline communities at home and more climate chaos abroad.

As oil and gas companies have sold their products for higher prices in foreign countries than they could domestically, “the promised benefits of the end to the U.S. export ban” for American consumers “either failed to materialize or were much less impressive than touted by industry,” argued report author Alan Zibel, research director at Public Citizen.

“Over the past decade, the fossil fuel industry has reoriented itself to prioritize profits from consumers overseas, jacking up prices for American consumers, while putting the climate at peril, exploiting public lands, and leaving marginalized Gulf Coast communities in the lurch,” Zibel said in a statement. “The Biden administration must start thinking seriously about ways to gauge whether exports are in the public interest, and start making the interests of frontline communities, public lands and the climate a much higher priority.”

Americans will pay $22 BILLION more in heating costs this winter.

Meanwhile, Exxon raked in $18 BILLION in profits last quarter.

Corporate greed is the root of our suffering.

— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) October 17, 2022

Public Citizen’s report highlights a study commissioned by former President Donald Trump’s Department of Energy that “claimed, preposterously, that consumers would benefit” from U.S. gas exports “due to their natural gas industry stock market investments,” just one example of the promised benefits of ending the export ban.

“The study failed to mention that few low-income people own any stock, let alone shares of natural gas exporters,” the report adds.

[pullquote]”It is not in the public interest to justify exports overseas that result in increased energy poverty and energy insecurity for tens of millions.”[/pullquote]

In 2022, amid global energy market chaos spurred by Russia’s assault on Ukraine, U.S. crude oil exports have surged, with roughly 29% of production going overseas in the first half of the year, according to Public Citizen’s analysis of data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

“That is more than double the 12% exported in 2017 and quadruple the 7% exported in 2016, the first full year of unrestricted crude oil exports,” the report notes. “Unprecedented exports of natural gas contribute directly to soaring U.S. natural gas prices, tying the prices families in the U.S. pay for heating their homes to global calamities.”

Meanwhile, Public Citizen points out, data indicates that heating costs for U.S. households using natural gas will be around 28% higher compared to last year. The residential price of electricity is also projected to rise by 7.5%.

“The fossil fuel industry has hailed the twin booms in oil and natural gas exports, claiming that they will be a boon to American consumers and national security,” the report continues. “But the economic instability and damage to local communities and the planet created by this rapid export expansion are only now becoming clear.”

Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program, said in a statement that “the consequence of America becoming the largest fossil fuel  exporter in the world has upended domestic energy markets, and exposes U.S. households to punishing energy burdens.”

“It is not in the public interest to justify exports overseas that result in increased energy poverty and energy insecurity for tens of millions of Americans,” said Slocum.

The destructive impacts of surging oil and gas exports hardly come as a surprise to Slocum, who warned Congress during July 2015 congressional testimony that lifting the longstanding export ban would “result in higher gasoline prices for U.S. motorists and small businesses.”

Public Citizen’s report was published as U.S. gas prices are ticking up again ahead of the winter season following Saudi-led OPEC’s decision to slash oil production by two million barrels a day starting in November.

Green groups argued that the U.S. should respond to OPEC’s move by reinstating the ban on oil exports, but the Biden administration has yet to do so as the fossil fuel industry lobbies against the proposal.

Short of reviving the export ban, Public Citizen on Monday called on the Biden administration and Congress to impose a windfall profits tax on oil and gas producers and exporters, “subject crude oil exports to regulatory oversight,” and block the approval of any new liquefied natural gas export terminals.

“In the long run, we must as a planet wean ourselves from our dangerous dependence on fossil fuels that have sowed turmoil and chaos, as has been so evident during this tumultuous year,” the report states. “Lawmakers and the Biden administration must be skeptical about industry-supported policies that further a massive expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure and put industry profits over people.”

Common Dream’s work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

  ban, export, oil, opec, prices