"overseas oil, even after shipping costs, is often cheaper than domestically-produced crude"
If that were really true, the US would not be able to export oil, which it does.
There may still be a tax break for some imported oil. Saudi oil was taxed by Saudi Arabia, and this was tax-deductible for US buyers, even though ARAMCO is owned by the Saudi government and that "tax" is the government taxing itself. Not sure if this still applies.
Some export is geography. Alaska has good access to Japan. There isn't enough pipeline capacity through the Sierras. Stuff like that.
Not sure about the refinery argument. Here's a study made during the last oil glut, so the technology is the same but the economics are different.[1] (Start at page 7.) Refineries can crack heavy crude down to lighter fractions, but they don't have to. Turns out that's not the problem. The problem is getting out too many light fractions - propane, methane, butane - for which markets are limited. Some distillation columns can't handle too much of the light fractions. It's possible to add a reformer stage to combine light hydrocarbons down to at least the gasoline level, but most refineries don't have those. All those problems are solveable on a scale of five years.
The refineries made a bet a few decades ago about what type of oil they'd be refining - the stuff from Venezuela, Canada and Russia - heavy sour.
This was advantageous for a while, but with fracking, there's an abundance of light sweet crude in the US... that the refineries aren't equipped to process. So, we export that oil.
Changing to light sweet crude is a significant investment to the point where switching over isn't economically viable.
They could change over in a matter of days, but choose not to because processing heavy sour oil is more profitable - since it can be purchased cheaper.
If heavy sour were suddenly unavailable, they'd use light sweet in a heartbeat.
If you’re going to claim there’s a factual problem here it would be helpful to point to the correct figures and make clear the change in inference we need to make. As it is, this just sounds like a cheap political jibe.
If that were really true, the US would not be able to export oil, which it does.
There may still be a tax break for some imported oil. Saudi oil was taxed by Saudi Arabia, and this was tax-deductible for US buyers, even though ARAMCO is owned by the Saudi government and that "tax" is the government taxing itself. Not sure if this still applies.
Some export is geography. Alaska has good access to Japan. There isn't enough pipeline capacity through the Sierras. Stuff like that.
Not sure about the refinery argument. Here's a study made during the last oil glut, so the technology is the same but the economics are different.[1] (Start at page 7.) Refineries can crack heavy crude down to lighter fractions, but they don't have to. Turns out that's not the problem. The problem is getting out too many light fractions - propane, methane, butane - for which markets are limited. Some distillation columns can't handle too much of the light fractions. It's possible to add a reformer stage to combine light hydrocarbons down to at least the gasoline level, but most refineries don't have those. All those problems are solveable on a scale of five years.
[1] https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/petroleum/morelto/pdf/l...