1970s. But this isnt the 1970s. One of the key questions he already asked. What would happen if we are repealed the ban . What would happen to domestic gasoline prices . I havent seen any study that says they would go up. And, you know, the reverse question would be what would happen if we dont . What happens to Domestic Oil Production in the midterm and long term if we keep the ban in place . The key issue there is the market for domestic crude oil. U. S. Refinery capacity, i think, is around 12 Million Barrels a day. Is that correct . Domestic crude oil is close to nine Million Barrels a day. You get to 12 by adding in biofuels. Im asking what the refinery capacity is . Over 16 Million Barrels a day. Its over 16. Yes, sir. Okay. I didnt think it was that high. My point was going to be if we dont have a market in the United States for the crude oil at our refineries, if you cant export it, you keep it in the ground. But if its 16 Million Barrels, we can increase domestic supply significant i had and just freeze out or push out imports from overseas. Wouldnt that be correct . You raise an interesting point. Many people look at the growth and Domestic Production and the flatness and demand and they envision a world where the u. S. Is not importing any oil. But, in fact, the u. S. May continue to import oil simply are to refine it in our very efficient refining system and sell those products back out into the Global Markets. Mexico is finally freeing up their oil economy. And if they followthrough with their constitutional change, youll see a large number of u. S. Producers in exploration going down to mexico and i would assume that there would be Additional Oil in mexico that could come up to the United States in the next five to six years plus weve got canada and i know this are issues on the environmental front with the canadian heavy oil. I only have 22 seconds. If i had to look at this panel and you had to vote yes or no on repealing the ban, i think i have three yeses and a maybe. Im going to ask miss garden, i didnt sense that the Carnegie Institute is totally opposed to repealing the ban. I think your concern is transparency and information for environmental purposes. Is that correct . Yeah, i think we have a reprieve here. Demand really cooled off domestically. There is Due Diligence that has to happen so we is a sense when we change policies one day. I think were headed to more open markets in general. But do remember, i should just add, the oil market is one of the least efficient markets. There are so many reasons barriers to entry. Barriers to exit, not enough information, theres far more efficiency in peach markets than in oil markets. So its a big question. Could i ask one more question . Is it possible for these lighter shale oil thats are being produced in north dakota to be exported as refine products . Because theyre so light and almost need no refining . Theyre really different from each other. The oil is like nigerian crude. We backed out a lot of nigerian crudes. If we export, were going to have implications for nigeria and the north sea. It is really unusual. It is much, much lighter. And it needs to have the things stripped out of it. Even with the Light Tight Oil category, there is a lot diversity here that we dont have a lot information about. This time i want to recognize the gentleman from kentucky for five minutes. Thank you very much. I thank all the witnesses for their testimony and knowledge. I learned a lot. Im still not sure where i am on this issue. And im curious that we talked about the potential down side and while everything hooks wonderful right now, prices down, that would seem to be mitigate against worrying about a crisis. But isnt it entirely possible we could return to a 1970s situation . I was a staffer here in the 7 os. I remember those lines as well. Would it be useful to have this contingency measure because whether its International Outbreak of war, terrorism whatever it may be that we have some way to protect our domestic supply in case of an emergency . As opposed to just saying were not going to worry about that when we get to it . So i think because were in this era of new oil and everything is changing, the risks are chachging. We have the gee yoe political risks on the one hand with many place as broad that historically produced oil, and then we have operational and environmental risks here that we have to contend with. We have new oils, new conditions and then we have huge growth in china in terms of demand thats sporedic. Its not going to be red hot consistently. Its a market. We do tend to talk about oil in a moment in time because it sold on every corner that its as if this is the condition that exists for all time. But the reality is its very dynamic. There are different consumption patterns. Even in america were selling a lot more suvs right now. Theyre up tremendously. Were reversing our demand as as i said, were not necessarily bound to that. So there is no guarantee with given the volatility of the market that if we eliminate the prohibition that we can have the kind of impact on prices that we would expect that the prices will be lower. We cant guarantee that. We have the largest Refining Capacity. Well maintain imports of oil even just because we want to put product on the market. Thats what industry does here. Its one of the big parts of industry. I think if i could just add answer your question, you know, most of the oil we consume in the United States is in the transportation sector. Rather than maintain the ban, we would be wiser to have an accelerated program to use our vast natural gas reserves to a greater degree in transportation. There are numerous studies. It would be a long term effort. But if we could replace the diesel fuel that we use in our 18 wheel trucks, if we can use natural gas and marine transportation on the great lakes and our major rivers, coastal trade, that is another major place we can save. And we have Companies Already experimenting with using lng and railroad locomotives. So if we can reduce the use of oil in transport by relying on a vast natural gas, i think that would be a far more prudent policy than continuing the ban on crude oil exports. If i could just say one thing. If we go back and look at the history of everything we did, if you want to take one lesson out of that, we need policies which are robust against uncertainty. And every time we try to guess what we think we know what the future looks like, Nuclear Power is going to be too cheap to meter. Or were going to bab the use of natural gas and power plants. We really have a hard time getting this right. And we dont really know what the future looks hike. We do much better when we have policies that allow a hot of, you know, a hot of the marketplace and individuals to adjust to changing circumstances. Once we put something in blas here, its really hard to fix it. Those of us that go way back, we is dozens of small refiners. We had dozens of the small refineries that came out of the arcane regulations of price controls. It was really hard. We have this political establishment of refiners. I think you have to keep in mind as we go forward that what the real lessons of this renaissance is, it was ab open system. The heavy hand of the government is not trying to stop the guys. We didnt have to rely on federal land. And so as we go forward, we have to really think hard about what kinds of strategies are likely to be more productive. My time is up. This time i recognize the gentleman from mr. Illinois for five minute. This is a tremendous panel. And a great hearing. Thank you chairman for that. Tons of questions. So im going to try to put them in some sense of order. But miss gordon, i appreciate your testimony. The original epca, i didnt know there was reporting comments and more transparency in following up what congressman barton said. There is probably some truth to getting more information so that markets can operate more effectively and efficiently. I appreciate the comments. There are different type of crude oil. This is a major front to my question. But we know refineries made Major Investments based upon a world they perceived six years ago which is significantly changed today. I think the other thing that is not a part of this discussion or debate is transportation costs and long pipelines versus what could actually happen in the future with all these more localized resources of available is that you could see closer interaction between these new fines and local, more local refineries. I appreciated the statement because the need of production platform in a stable part of the world is really not just for what it does on hedging the risks, the volatile risk of pricing, really addressing my colleague from kentuckys question. But also internationally. I focus on Eastern Europe a lot of times. I understand energy extortion. So importation of lng that we would like to see for our allies in europe and Eastern Europe, i think the same would be true on crude oil exports. You have to have a stable platform to be able to do that. Hence the next kind of position. Because even in the map, they figure on this testimony for the three, you have the major bas s basins. There are more that are going to develop. Which now weve gone through the legislative process. But so they have the illinois basin. We have more deep water applications. We have anwar debate that will always be there. We have a Natural Petroleum reserve. We have the atlantic coast. We have keystone xl debate. What i think here because im afraid we have this huge supply. We cant rely on government to set the parameters. We have to let the markets do it. Which are recoverable based upon the pricing of a barrel of crude oil. This is not what they may be able to be exploited because the cost for recovery is high. But then in the case where there is a new change in world dynamics, that cost might be available for continuing exploration. Does that make sense . Right now there is a race going on between the lower evaluations and productivity and technolo technology. Were seeing some things. Theyre out there two years. Some things are very near. If you take a traditional hydraulic job and across the u. S. , 40 of the jobs are very uneconomic in some ways. There are exploration on a horizontal pipe are not working. But there is technology developing now. Theyre going to drastically improve that. So you couldnt get you could have a high cost basin which doesnt look like its doing too well right away. In a few years, things can change. We want strategies which are robust under uncertainty. We try to prescribe the future. Were going to be wrong. In your testimony, you did state that increasing oil exports will help lower the prices at the pump. Or gasoline prices, yes. The last thing i want to ask because were starting to get talk to by a lot of people, is there a difference because really, except mr. Gordon made started separating heavy, sour and light sweet. Is there a difference . Is there a credible argument in separating the crude oil price and easing the ban on one but not easing the ban on the other . And that will be my last question if some people want to weigh in on it, id appreciate it. I just will add that i think the time is coming that were going to have baskets of crude that are split much more on quality than on location. I think that these oils are quite different from each other. The market needs this information. So whether regulations follow or not, i think the idea of separating oils into the baskets which is somewhat done but not largely in a market right now is a wave of the future. I want to honor and acknowledge, i realize im walking into the john dingel room, the Incredible Service that yes, i know. It is the john dingel room. Our colleague, former chairman and under whose leadership i was first asked to be on the committee and also my colleague from california, Ranking Member and my neighbor mr. Henry waxman for their Incredible Service to this committee and to our nation. I know he stepped out. I want to also bid farewell to our friend john barrow from the peach state. The oil market is complex. I picked that up from the hearing today. We need detailed, accurate information, i believe, to conduct a proper assessment of increasing exports. Yet, in your testimony, you say that accessing this information is difficult. My question for you to elaborate a bit is on that. Why is this information so difficult to access . The first reason is that the oils are the newest kid on the block so to speak. They havent been around in so long. We have venezuelan oils. You think about getting the information from venezuela. There is uae. There are oils if all over the world, indonesia. We dont have any oils that are from north dakota or texas. So when theyre reported, you cant compare oils to one another. So having more consistent reporting on information is one big problem. Another one, having met with doe is that apparently, and i think you can talk more about this, but apparently the Energy Department cant collect oil on data freely. It turns out that omb, i was faber gasted when i heard this, they say this is duplication of effort. Industry submitts information on oil. They dont set reporting requirements for oil. When you read epca, there is room for this to happen. So doe is only getting the information that industry wants to report out. These are newer oils. There is less information reported out. And then the third one ill mention, one of the partners tried to purchase data. There is data thats owned by the big oil consultants. And after negotiating for a matter about a year in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, they were told the data wasnt for sale. There are a lot of concerns when it comes to oil data. I want to use that last sentence as a segue to another kind of topic. Any discussion of oil exports must be considered in the context of our Overall Energy policy and the realities of climate change. And you also touched on that. Youve done an extensive analysis on the climate impacts of our nations oil policies. In your testimony, you discuss preliminary research on various types of american crude oils that could be exported if the current ban is lifted. Have you been able to complete this Climate Assessment . No. None of the 28 oils weve been able to model are we have u. S. Oils that have been around like gulf of mexico, mars. We dont have alaska north slope. We dont have the new tight oils in the 28 test oils because data is just not available. This lack of transparency is very concerning. Not just for our assessment of oil export policy but for conducting proper oversight of the industry in general. If the industry is asking us to lift the export ban, i believe they need to provide the information that is so clearly needed to properly assess the very policy that theyre asking us to expand upon. I yield back. The gentleman from pennsylvania is recognized for five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you for your testimony. I, too, remember the lock ling in the 7 os. After waiting for 45 minutes or an hour with your car idling, the lines backed up on the highway and some people just topping off and some people about to go empty. There were a lot of short tem r tempe tempers. It was a very bad situation, wasting a lot of oil, gasoline. Were any studies ever made on how much waste there was with those long lines back in the 7 os . I dont think that eia did. I think youre absolutely right, congressman pits. The whole idea behind the program, i think made some sense at the time. But the implementation of it left a lot to be desired. A host the problems had to do with the availability of gasoline and different areas. It was based on the year ago use and as we got into the crisis, you didnt have enough people in the prior year were all out having vacations and outside of the cities and thats where all the gas heen went. But during the crisis, they were all if lines in the cities. They couldnt get the gasoline to go out on their family holiday. It was a bit of a mess. I worked on this program a bit when i was in the department of energy. You cannot imagine the small changes, you know, people just think a refinery takes crude oil and processes it. Theyre blending dozens of components. Every day there was enormous misallocation, shortages, wrong kind of mix because the market was completely surpassed by the government price controls. I dont think you can find anybody who looked at this program that wants to defend it. It was an unmitigated disaster. It substantially delayed our capacity to even adjust to the crisis. And in addition, after waiting for 45 minutes or an hour, the station, many of them would run out of gas. Youd have to leave and come back another day. The average family with expect to save several hundred dollars a year if the prices stay where they are. How can we maximize these benefits and sustain them over the long run . The benefit to house old income is coming from lower oil prices. Most of that coming in gasoline. The number of about 800 per household is right for 30 decline thats from average prices last year that would be sustained for about a year. Those numbers could even be a hill bit higher than that. Depending on where Oil Prices Settle out. That is going to have a pretty positive effect on the ability of households to spend. And i think well begin to see the positive impact of that on the economy. They concluded if we had this 30 decline sustained for a year that it could add as much as 1 to u. S. Gdp. If the ban were lifted, what effect would it have on gasoline prices . How would it impact our refinery sector . Are are you going to continue . Gasoline prices, you know, again, if we stay at these levels, gasoline prices could be down almost 77 cents a gallon. Thats, again, a huge plus with gasoline prices averaging that much lower than the prior year. Obviously, there will be some losers and production, producers are going to have lower income. This could have big effects on countries like venezuela and others that depend on oil revenues. That could lead to unare rest there. This is why i think the idea that policies, you kn