The Panhandle Import Reduction Initiative (PIRI) Calls for New White House Policy: Unfair Trade Endangers U.S. Oil Industry Too
In a letter directed to the President of the United States and received
by the White House, the founders of (PIRI), the Panhandle Import
Reduction Initiative representing thousands of independent small
producers of oil in the Southwest United States wrote, “We call upon
President Donald J. Trump for a second Presidential Memorandum to order
the Secretary of Commerce, to establish the crude oil industry as a
“Core” industry to be added to steel, aluminum, vehicles, aircraft,
shipbuilding and semiconductors. Crude oil should be recognized as one
of the critical elements of US manufacturing and defense industrial
bases, which we must defend against unfair trade practices and other
abuses.”
The PIRI founders further stated in the letter “Following the
Presidential Memorandum on the case for steel against Chinese export
practices that you signed, PIRI further calls for an immediate
Investigation by the Department of Commerce of Saudi Arabia and OPEC
abuse between August 2014 and March 2016 of the American oil industry by
expanding production to lower world oil prices to destabilize and cause
hardships to American producers mainly of light tight oil (shale oil).
This was an announced effort to undermine and shut-down producers with
higher costs of production. According to one estimate some 150 US
companies filed bankruptcy and $150 billion in capital outlay postponed
or cancelled. More than 300,000 US industry-related jobs were lost.”
This abuse under the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 should be investigated,
similar to the investigation of the domestic steel industry,
“to consider the domestic production of crude oil needed for projected
national defense requirements, the existing and anticipated
availabilities to meet such requirements; the capacity of domestic
industry to meet such a requirement, the existing and
anticipated availabilities of human resources, products, raw materials,
and other services essential to national defense, the requirements of
growth of such industries and such supplies and services, including
the investment, exploration and development necessary to assure growth,
and the importation of goods in terms of their quantities,
availabilities, character, and use as those affect such industries and
the capacity of the United States to meet national security
requirements.”
PIRI asks President Donald J. Trump on behalf of its thousands of
members that this investigation include a characterization of the new
crude oil industry based on new technology that is producing oil at
historic high levels and has resisted a shutdown and abuse with this
technology. Further, PIRI requests a review of national defense with
domestic oil production capable of self-sufficiency in contrast to
dependency on foreign oil imports over water (oceans) with consequent
cost of deployment of naval protection and other military protection of
the “flow of world oil” should be included. The cost of a strategic
petroleum reserve of nearly one billion barrels of oil is no longer
justified as a hedge against foreign oil import disruption.
For National security, the unfair trade act of overcapacity against US
oil producers must stop, Mr. President. Stopping overcapacity is
paramount, as in the case of Chinese steel, of Saudi Arabian and to
lesser extent of Gulf Nations production and export of crude oil and its
potential to be used at any time as a tool to compete with and damage
American producers in a future strategic “price war” for market share
which occurred from 2014-2016. This should include the purpose of “spare
capacity” in Saudi Arabia as an offset to supply disruption threats to
the United States which now has domestic production that would leave it
unaffected. There is a potential that “spare capacity” can again be used
and would constitute an “abuse” as “overcapacity” to lower prices and
threaten the new American crude oil industry.
The letter concludes: "Mr. President, American superiority in energy
security means self-sufficiency: Throwing off these trade shackles then
is the fight for fair trade in Steel and Aluminum, we must prevail in
the fight for US oil producers too."
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Copyright Business Wire 2017
Source: Business Wire
(May 18, 2017 - 8:00 AM EDT)
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