Sunday 12 January 2020

Trump Is Wrong The U.S. Does Need Middle East Oil. - Bloomberg

Trump Is Wrong The U.S. Does Need Middle East Oil. - Bloomberg:

President Donald Trump was wrong last week when he said that the U.S. doesn’t need Middle East oil. For one thing, U.S. refiners still need to process it to make the products their customers want. What’s more, America’s car drivers and truckers need it to keep flowing or else they’ll face higher prices at their local gas pump.

Trump made his assertion during an address from the White House after Iran launched a barrage of missiles at two airbases in Iraq used by the U.S. military and amid fears of an escalation in attacks on key oil infrastructure in the region, including potentially the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz — a narrow neck of water that connects the Persian Gulf to the open seas.

It’s certainly true that very little of the crude produced in the Persian Gulf region now finds its way to refineries in the U.S. Less than 5% of the 16.5 million barrels a day of crude and condensate — a light form of oil pumped from gas fields — that flowed through Hormuz in 2019 went to American refineries, according to tanker tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.


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