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
So basically oil isnt just oil, it has quality levels. Some oil is really easy to refine in to other products, some is really hard to refine.
Lets say youre a relatively poor country with a lot of oil but almost all of it is the really hard to refine type, you arent necessarily going to have the ability to refine it in your country. So when the US who has a ton of really good quality oil but also more capacity for refining the hard to refine stuff than its using comes to you and says “hey we will trade that unusable for you oil for some of the refined products” thats a pretty good deal for you. You get some value for oil that otherwise has none to you.
Meanwhile on the US side, because that hard to refine oil is useless to the nations we are buying it off of we can usually get it pretty cheap. It can actually be more beneficial for us to export some of the high quality oil we naturally produce that most other countries can use for a high price, import that low quality oil that few other countries can use for a low cost, and then refine that oil along with whatever of our oil we didnt sell crude and sell the finished products. Profit all around
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