[Vision2020] Palin wrongly suggests Congress bans oil exports

[Saundra Lund]

Palin wrongly suggests Congress bans oil exports
By H. JOSEF HEBERT 
Associated Press Writer 
Published: Saturday, Oct. 25, 2008 

WASHINGTON -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, touted by GOP presidential candidate
John McCain as his expert on energy, seemed to have problems Thursday
explaining whether the government bans oil exports - especially from her
state's North Slope fields.

A questioner at a town hall-style meeting in Wisconsin said he had heard
that at least 75 percent of the oil drilled in Alaska was being sold to
China and said, if true, he would like to know why.

"No. It's not 75 percent of our oil being exported," Palin said, suggesting
some of Alaska's oil, in fact, may be going abroad but not that much. 

"In fact," she added, "Congress is pretty strict on, um, export bans of oil
and gas especially."

No Alaska oil has been exported since 2004, and little if any since 2000,
according to the Energy Information Administration and the Congressional
Research Service.

And Congress has never imposed outright bans on oil exports. Congress
prohibited exports of Alaska oil in 1973 when the Alaska oil pipeline was
built. But that ban was lifted in 1996 when there were large volumes of
Alaska oil coming down from the North Slope and U.S. demand was soft.

The Alaska ban has never been reinstated.

"It's been discussed recently as part of talk about drilling on the Outer
Continental Shelf," said Bill Wicker, a spokesman for the Senate Energy and
Natural Resources Committee. But he said there's been no active legislation
that would reinstate the Alaska ban or any thought on Capitol Hill of
banning other U.S. oil or natural gas exports.

Natural gas exports must be approved by the Energy Department under a 1938
law, although such authorization for gas shipments to Mexico, Canada and
Japan have been granted for many years. The Energy Department recently
indicated it is ready to renew authorization for shipping Alaska liquefied
natural gas, or LNG, to Japan.

There are no such restrictions when it comes to oil.

Between 1996 and 2004, about 95 million barrels of North Slope oil, roughly
2.7 percent of Alaska's production, was exported to South Korea, Japan,
China and Taiwan, according to the Energy Information Administration.

There have been little or no oil exports since 2000, according to the
Congressional Research Service. The EIA said there have been no Alaska oil
exports since 2004.

The United States exports a relatively small amount of oil and petroleum
production as Palin acknowledged as part of her answer, which largely
focused on the need for more domestic drilling.

"It's not a huge portion of any domestic supply being exported," Palin said
toward the end of her response, and seemed to contradict her earlier view
that Congress bans exports.

Last year, the United States exported 523 million barrels of petroleum
products, of which only a small amount was crude oil. That year it imported
more than 4.7 billion barrels of oil and oil products.

The United States exported 822 billion cubic feet of natural gas, almost all
by pipeline to Canada and Mexico, and a small amount of liquefied natural
gas, or LNG, to Japan and Mexico in 2007, according to the EIA. 

http://www.sacbee.com/839/story/1302427.html