“Why does the US import so much oil when they are the world’s largest exporter of it?”

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I keep hearing over and over that the US imports all of its gasoline and raw petroleum that it used, however when you look at the numbers its the greatest exporter of oil ever. Wouldn’t it make more sense for the US to just take some that they produce and keep it to sell to its own consumers.

In: Economics

43 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Most imports Are from Mexico and Canada. But the real reason is the jones act making inter-US tanker shipping prohibitively expensive.

There is almost no capacity to ship inter US via ship. Oil mostly moves on trains and in pipelines. Even if someone theoretically built a Jones act compliant super tanker, it would still be cheaper to ship a tanker of oil from Houston to China and another tanker from Saudi Arabia to NYC then it would be to ship from Houston to NYC.

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