Here Come the Lobbyists: Exxon Presses for Oil Exports as U.S. Production Soars

From National Journal:

Exxon Mobil is seeking to ease U.S. restrictions on crude oil exports as fresh data on soaring domestic production keeps pouring in.

The Wall Street Journal reports that an Exxon official, in comments alongside the company's annual energy outlook released Thursday, said it's time to revisit limits that date back 40 years.

"We are not dealing with an era of scarcity, we are dealing with a situation of abundance," Ken Cohen, Exxon's vice president of public and government affairs, told the newspaper. "We need to rethink the regulatory scheme and the statutory scheme on the books."

Cohen also pitched the export case to Bloomberg.

The oil giant's latest outlook predicts that by 2015, production from shale formations alone in the U.S.—such as the booming Bakken region in North Dakota—will exceed the output of every OPEC nation except Saudi Arabia....MORE

We'll have to bone up on the Export Administration Act of 1979 if we hope to track the lizards (and lizardskin) in Gucci Gulch.