Full Title: A Signal to the World: Renovating the Architecture of U.S. Energy Exports
Author(s): U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski
Publisher(s): U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski
Publication Date: January 1, 2014
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Description (excerpt):
This paper seeks to educate and to recommend. While many Americans have by now learned about the oil and gas revolution currently transforming the nation’s economy, far fewer know about a concurrent surge in energy exports that is remaking the global energy trade. Simply put, the United States is both producing and exporting more energy than ever. Net energy imports are at a 20-year low and projected to fall below 5 percent of total consumption by 2025.
Energy exports are contributing very substantially to the decline in the nation’s trade deficit. From 2006 to 2012, according to U.S. Census Bureau trade statistics, gross exports of “petroleum products” and “fuel oil” have increased in dollar-value more than any other “end- use” category. Over the same period, export values of “coal and fuels, other,” “fuel oil,” and “crude oil” have increased by 432%, 397%, and 342%, respectively. Combined energy exports are accounting for an ever-growing share of total U.S. trade with the world. The regulatory architecture that governs energy exports is antiquated, however, and applied unevenly across the sector. This paper proposes a series of recommendations to renovate the nation’s approach to energy trade and strengthen America’s global posture.