The CRUDE Act (H.R. 1850), introduced in the 119th Congress, would revise how the President may impose export licensing requirements or other restrictions on U.S. crude oil exports. The bill would require a formal, interagency finding process—by the Secretaries of Defense, Energy, and Commerce—that U.S. crude oil exports have caused sustained shortages or prices above world levels linked directly to U.S. production, and that those effects have caused or are likely to cause sustained adverse employment impacts in the United States. If those findings are made, the President would declare a national emergency (and publish the declaration in the Federal Register) as the trigger for any export controls. The bill also removes a previous subparagraph and adjusts the related provisions, tightening the explicit preconditions for any export restrictions. In short, the bill ties any move to restrict crude oil exports to a formal, jointly certified national-emergency process, requiring clear interagency findings and official emergency declaration before restrictions could be imposed.
Key Points
- 1The Act is titled the Continuing Robust and Uninhibited Drilling and Exporting Act (CRUDE Act).
- 2It amends the authority for export licensing/restrictions on U.S. crude oil by requiring joint findings from the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Energy, and the Secretary of Commerce.
- 3The joint findings must show that U.S. crude exports have caused sustained shortages or prices above world levels attributable to those exports and that employment effects in the U.S. are or will be materially adverse.
- 4The President must declare a national emergency based on those findings and formally publish the emergency in the Federal Register.
- 5The provision that previously relied on subparagraph C is removed, and the punctuation around subparagraph B is adjusted, effectively narrowing the triggers for action to the national-emergency pathway described.