The Obama administration has set the stage for a fierce debate over a US ban on crude oil exports by allowing more overseas sales of lightly processed oil as it grapples with the consequences of cheap crude.
Last week’s decision will push the US’s 40-year-old export ban up the political agenda as environmental concerns over shale production crosscut with rising tensions between US producers and Saudi Arabia over the falling price of oil.
Critics of the crude export ban — including oil industry executives and some Republicans — say it is a 1970s anachronism that should be scrapped as the US faces a glut of shale oil, which has undercut the global market by reducing US import needs.
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