Independent US Oilmen Want Ban on Crude Imports

EghtesadOnline: Months after the US energy industry triumphed in overturning an oil export ban, a group of independent producers wants to take policy one step further and curtail crude imports.

News ID: ۷۶۸۲۸۹

18 July 2016

The Panhandle Import Reduction Initiative has begun campaigning for quotas on all foreign suppliers excluding Canada and Mexico. Its founders, Texas and New Mexico oilmen, said Saudi Arabia is trying to crush their industry and it is time to fight back, Financial Times reported.
“It’s not fair and it’s not free when a country is trying to drive individual producers in the United States out of business,” said Tom Cambridge, an oil producer in Amarillo, Texas. “What we would like to do is limit imports.”
The push comes two years after crude first dropped below $100 a barrel. In late 2014, Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members resolved to keep taps open despite falling prices, hastening bankruptcy for dozens of US producers.