Italy’s imports of US crude oil vaulted to a record in June after attacks by armed groups shuttered two major Libyan oil ports and cut off most deliveries from the OPEC country, a key supplier to Europe, according to Thomson Reuters trade flow data and shipping intelligence firm Kpler
Source: Middle East Monitor – The flows reflected the US oil industry’s growing ability to serve as an alternative supplier when contained regional conflicts pinch oil supplies to allies. US lawmakers lifted a 40-year-old crude export ban in late 2015, allowing producers to push oil extracted from shale rocks in West Texas, Oklahoma and North Dakota into European and Asian markets dominated by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries and other US rivals like Russia. “The US is turning into a stable supplier of light, sweet crude that can go to market when others can’t,” said Jim Krane, fellow for energy studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston
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