WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) today released a report demonstrating that petroleum exchanges between the United States and nearby nations could be approved immediately. Such transactions would be a partial measure that could help alleviate the oversupply of light crude and condensate in the center of the country, without requiring presidential action or a rulemaking from the Commerce Department.

The report contains more than 100 pages of documents from the administrations of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter, highlighting the role of oil exchanges and temporary exports all the way through the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton – up to the present day.

The report – Crude Pro Quo: The Use of Oil Exchanges to Increase Efficiency – is available on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee website. It discusses:

• Nine years of crude oil exchanges between the United States and Canada, from 1976 to 1985, totaling tens of millions of barrels;
• Treatment of Panama as an “adjacent foreign state” for purposes of temporary “exports” for Alaskan crude to U.S. Gulf of Mexico and East Coast states;
• The long-considered possibility of an exchange of Alaskan crude oil – sent to Japan – in return for Middle Eastern or Mexican crude delivered to the United States.

Murkowski, the senior Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has been advocating for lifting the ban on crude oil and condensate exports since releasing a white paper on the topic in January. She also unveiled a “roadmap” to lifting the ban on oil exports at CERA Week in March, and has released two additional reports – on the president’s authority to allow exports and the Commerce Department’s authority to modernize its regulations.

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