American Petroleum Institute Touts Oil Exports to Fend Off Iran, Russia Despite API Members Tied to Both Countries
The American Petroleum Institute (API) has launched a new advertising campaign in its ongoing push to oust the U.S. oil exports ban in place since 1975.
One of the most recent ads, titled “Crude Oil Exports and National Security” on YouTube, starts off with ominous music and asks, “Who loves the ban on U.S.crude oil exports?” The answer, says API, is “Iran and Russia, not exactly our best friends.”
Not mentioned: both countries currently maintain business ties with API‘s dues-paying members.
The ad, reported the Houston Chronicle, aired in Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, New Mexico, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia and Washington.
API has also launched a new website dedicated to pushing oil exports, OilAndExports.com, which makes the case for exporting U.S. oil. And two API front groups, both Energy Citizens and Energy Nation, have also published petitions calling for congressional offices to lift the ban.
The push by the industry’s most powerful lobby comes as rumors have swirled about the potential for a merger betweenAmerica’s Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA), the hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) industrial complex’s lobby, and API.
It also comes as the U.S. House of Representatives, led by a Republican Party majority, just passed a bill to end the oil export ban.
API is not alone in pushing the oil exports to fend off Iran message, with the industry-funded Producers for American Crude Oil Exports and the Domestic Energy Producers Alliance (DEPA) also disseminating their own similar commercials.
DEPA, created by Harold Hamm — Continental Resources CEO and 2012 Republican Party presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s energy advisor — has also created its own website advocating for lifting the ban at LiftTheExportBan.com.
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