O’Leary May Back Alaska Exports

A move to lift a ban on oil exports from Alaska got tentative support from the secretary of energy Tuesday, but an aide to U.S. Sen. Patty Murray said the ban would stand if challenged on the Senate floor.

Murray (D-Wash.) is fighting to make the ban permanent.

Under current law, oil from Alaska’s North Slope must be sold in the United States, a condition imposed when the trans-Alaskan pipeline was approved by Congress in the 1970s.

The Department of Energy is expected to release a study later this month on the costs and benefits of lifting the ban.

Petroleum refiners and consumer groups support the ban because they believe West Coast oil prices would soar if North Slope crude could be sold abroad. Selling Alaska’s production abroad would make oil scarcer in the United States and, the groups argue, more expensive.

Murray, whose constituents include Tosco Corp., which owns a refinery in her state, is up against California oil companies and British Petroleum, which favor lifting the ban. BP wants to sell oil in Far Eastern markets from its part-owned Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, field, while California oil producers think a price rise could spur new drilling in the state.

Secretary of Energy Hazel O’Leary, speaking at a meeting of the New York Society of Security Analysts in New York, said that if lifting the ban “is not detrimental to the economies of Alaska and California,” she would support removing it.

Major maritime unions have removed objections to lifting the ban. Unions that now support lifting it include the Seafarers International Union, the American Maritime Officers and the International Organization of Masters, Mates & Pilots.