Oil Quotas and Import Fees? No, Get America Back to Work – Article by Lucian Pugliaresi and Larry Goldstein
As the Covid-19 pandemic hit full stride the U.S. and world petroleum markets experienced unprecedented demand destruction in excess of ten million barrels per day. Many policymakers and some industry executives called for import quotas and other measures to disconnect the U.S. from world oil markets. It was a bad and counterproductive idea then and now calls by some policymakers to ban U.S. crude oil exports is an equally bad idea. In the article, Goldstein and Pugliaresi point out that:
“The free movement of capital, crude oil and petroleum products remain critical to sustaining the productive capacity of the U.S. oil and natural gas industry. These efficiencies played a large role in the rapid expansion of U.S. oil production and remain one of the central reasons that large volumes of U.S. crude imports also result in large volumes of higher value added exports of petroleum products. We disrupt these flows at our own peril.”
The article published in Real Clear Energy can be found here.