EXCLUSIVE TO THE TRIB: For the sake of jobs, lift the ban on exporting U.S. oil
By John Boehner
Saturday, Aug. 22, 2015
The United States recently overtook Russia and Saudi Arabia to become the world's leading oil and natural gas producer. This is a big achievement, especially when you consider that just a decade ago, our energy future looked murky. We were importing most of the oil we consumed; we were building terminals to import natural gas. Congress even passed a law in 2006 to move the country toward other sources of energy.
Republicans didn't give up, though. We included a provision in that same law — the Energy Policy Act — which recognized that the states were doing a good job regulating the process of hydraulic fracturing. We saw that Washington didn't need to dictate how things were done or get involved at all.
Ten years later, this one provision has helped unleash a national energy boom that has created countless jobs and a manufacturing revolution.
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You see, for all its success, this energy boom is currently running into a brick wall in the form of other federal government policies that date back to the 1970s. Even as the Obama administration seeks to lift sanctions on Iran's oil exports, the law is still keeping our own producers from exporting crude oil.
Most Americans don't even know that we have such a ban, but we do, and it costs them every time they fill up their gas tank.
By lifting the ban, we can create about a million more jobs at home. We can increase household incomes and lower prices at the pump even further. And we can help our allies, including Israel, which imports much of its oil from Russia. With all the potential here, I hope the administration will work with us in the coming months to lift the oil export ban once and for all.
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