The restrictions were intended to make sure America was energy independent. Since that goal was accomplished, there isn't really a reason to keep them.
Increasing American exports hurts countries that depend on energy exports. America can manage both with and without exports, but other countries can not.
The next step in my mind is increasing non-oil American energy and exporting even more oil, this would further destabilize those oil-dependent countries (most of whom are not friends of the US).
Venezuela is one of the first test cases for those consequences. Their system put them down, the US no longer needing/wanting their sour crude will make it far more difficult to get back up. US oil imports from Venezuela were near one million barrels per day as recently as 2012. It's down about 40% from there, and the US now buys around 60% of their total oil output. It has also been hitting Cuba indirectly (as a Venezuela dependent) for some time and now appears to be entering another stage there.[1] By the time Venezuela gets itself back together as a functioning country and could think about rebuilding its output, the world is unlikely to have much demand for its oil. The IEA is expecting their oil production to drop below one million barrels per day soon (from 3.5 million barrels per day in ~1998). Their estimated extractable reserves was always a bit farcical, however even if you chopped that down by 2/3, roughly 100 billion barrels, that still ends up being several trillion dollars in national wealth that will mostly never be realized.
You cannot put the collapse of Venezuela on US policies... The US didn't put Chavez / Maduro in power, and they didn't ask them to oppress their own people.
Oil export restrictions could never have helped make us energy independent. They were at best neutral. At worse they were a break on energy development in the U.S. because if you're going to bump up against export restrictions, then you'll have a problem. It turns out that oil export restrictions were just a show.
I thought this would be obvious to people. An oil glut means fewer dollars spent on gas, making an effective tax cut for Americans, and putting that money into the economy in a more productive way.
The opposite actually. Allowing exports gives a market to that glut, keeping prices in the US higher.
Imagine a scenario where the US pumps more oil than we can use - prices would crash (until enough non-profitable production shuts down). Instead we sell the oil, and prices remain higher.
They don't go extra high mind you, it's more of a stabilizing influence, keeping prices inline with global prices instead of being extra low in the US, because obviously on a global scale more oil pumped by the US means lower prices (since there's more oil), and oil production is shut down in other parts of the world.
Give that argument, wouldn't Texas be better off seceding from the rest of the union and not exporting any oil? Practically free energy for all their residents!
Of course that would be foolish, they need to import things in return. Similarly, the US is benefiting from importing goods that are cheaper than they otherwise would be, because it's exporting more oil and lowering the market price.
I don't think you have to secede from the union to not export oil. Just add some really bureaucratic and complicated zoning for any export pipelines or terminal construction, etc.
If there were free energy there people would start energy intensive industry, over time enough demand would go up enough to balance out supply.
That's basically what happens in Iceland with alumunium, or Canada with Hydro-Quebec. You can check out their economies to see real-world examples.
Quebec issue is really a NIMBY syndrome, they have no problem using gas/oil, but they have no problem 1) using Alberta's oil, and 2) getting boatload of (dirty) money from the equalization policy.
You were in so much rush to spill some hate on Quebec that you failed to realize that your comment has no relationship with the point that the parent was making. Oil in Quebec has no relationship to the previous comment, the comment was how some energy-intensive industries develop in economies where energy is dirt cheap. What is dirt cheap in Quebec is electricity (made out of water, hydro-electricity), which created the aluminimum industry and lots of data center.
How is that any relevant on how Quebec doesn't want to have pipelines?
No, because no one would bother to produce oil they could not sell at a profit. There's a lot more to economics and politics than the price of oil anyways.
Lower world oil prices, which in turn should weaken the power of the mostly horrible oil producing states like Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela. Also Norway.
This should make the world marginally better for human rights and marginally worse for climate change.
Disclaimer: I'm just some programmer who reads the web too much.
I've seen a video which made a lot of sense to me, but what I think is happening is the American government is better there will be an oil glut in the future. Not only have more countries found large supplies of oil, but with electric cars quickly become a huge market and tech adoption being high they are betting this will lower oil demand.
That's not even mentioning that we are only one valid solid-state battery breakthrough from making large vehicles electric too.
