The US government is considering doing away with a four-decade-old law that bans the sale and export of American oil abroad. The decision follows a slew of US-led strategic wars and sanctions in the Middle East that have raised oil prices and demand.

May 17, 2015, The Wall Street Journal has published the news “EU Wants U.S. to Lift Ban on Oil Exports”, that caused a controversial reaction in the world of fuel and energy market.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Maros Sefcovic, the EU’s energy chief, said that easing flows of liquefied natural gas and crude oil from the U.S. to the EU is one of the bloc’s goals for the trans-Atlantic trade and investment partnership, or TTIP, that is currently under negotiation. The U.S. has so far resisted an energy chapter in TTIP, but the shale-gas boom in the U.S. and the EU’s trouble with Russia have pushed the issue into focus.

“We believe that the energy chapter in TTIP…could make a quite important contribution to the mutually beneficial trade exchange, but also to the energy security of the EU,” Mr. Sefcovic said.

Trevor Kincaid, a spokesman for the U.S. trade representative, said the U.S. hadn’t taken a final decision on whether to include an energy chapter into TTIP. Now experts can only predict that lifting the ban on exports from the United States will increase the demand for oil in the US, and thus increase the cost on the energy market.

~Skyline Energy Development Team