Congress lifted the ban on exporting U.S. crude oil in the omnibus spending bill passed last December, allowing crude oil to be exported to countries outside of North America for the first time since the mid-1970s. Despite some modelers at the Energy Information Administration projecting that lifting the crude oil export ban would result in some additional exports if the price spread between West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and Brent crude oil exceeded $6 to $8 a barrel,1 the United States is exporting crude oil even when the WTI price is just slightly less than the Brent price. In fact, the United States started exporting crude oil fifteen days after the ban was lifted when a tanker left the port of Corpus Christi, Texas for France.2 In the first 5 months of 2016, U.S. crude oil exports averaged 501,000 barrels per day, 9.4 percent (43,000 barrels per day) more than in 2015.3
