HOUSTON--There’s a day of reckoning on the way, cautioned Scott Sheffield, chairman and CEO of Pioneer Natural Resources Co. (NYSE: PXD) If the U.S. does not find a way to export its crude oil, that day will be a painful one.
The Oil and Gas Investor Executive of the Year has made it his mission to educate leaders in Washington about his concerns, which he detailed at Hart Energy’s recent Energy Capital Conference in Houston.
“We’re moving too much sweet crude to the Gulf Coast and the market can’t process it,” he said. “The refineries were rebuilt. They spent $100 billion redoing all the Gulf Coast refineries the last few years to handle heavy crude. So, where is this sweet crude going to go?”
Unconventional plays have added 3.5 million barrels per day (MMbbl/d) of mostly light, sweet shale oil to U.S. output, but crude oil exports are banned. Refined product exports are allowed, but Sheffield sees a limit to the refining sector’s ability to handle it. The last complex U.S. refinery to be built was Marathon Petroleum Corp.’s (NYSE: MPC) facility in Garyville, La., which started operations in 1977.
So the oil can either be exported, which is not an option at this time, or it can be stored until it is ready to be refined for the U.S. market or exported as a refined product. But storage capacity is finite as well, Sheffield noted. The Gulf Coast will max out at 300 MMbbl, and he expects that point to be reached in the next 18 to 30 months.
What then? The price of a barrel of WTI on the New York Mercantile Exchange, at about $106 in mid-June, will tumble to the range of $65 to $70, Sheffield projected. He also foresees these consequences:
• Producers will shut down rigs.
• Production growth will stall, then production will quickly decline.
• Domestic natural gas production will decline as well.
• Hundreds of thousands of jobs will be at risk.
• Less tax revenue for federal, state and local governments.
• U.S. trade deficit will widen as foreign light crude oil imports resume.
• Eliminating the ban is expected to contribute to lower global oil prices, which would benefit U.S. consumers more than the expected lowering of prices that the ban would produce.
Lifting the ban, Sheffield said, would result in the creation of 1.7 million jobs by 2020, the production of an additional 1.2 MMbbl/d and an extra $1.3 trillion in government revenue between 2016 and 2030.
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