ver the past decade, U.S. shale oil has substantially changed the nation's energy landscape. The introduction of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling has led to a dramatic increase in shale oil production that has ushered the United States from an era of relative oil scarcity into an era of relative oil abundance. As oil production increased, domestic oil producers began to look for export opportunities. However, until recently, these producers faced export restrictions due to a longstanding federal ban on most crude oil exports. The shale boom put a spotlight on the export ban, as it contributed to an oil glut depressing domestic crude oil prices relative to international prices. Fears of persistent oil price discounts led to calls to lift the oil export ban. In December 2015, the 40-year-old ban was lifted. In this article, we use aggregated and disaggregated oil market data to explore distortions highlighted by the export ban and potential efficiency gains from the lifting of the ban. We find that together, the shale oil boom and the oil export ban interacted to distort oil trade flows and prices, leading to an inefficient oil market. Although U.S. oil exports were increasing before the ban was lifted, they were flowing mainly to Canada, which was exempt from the ban. As a result, Canada reduced its imports from the rest of the world significantly.

This paper examines the effects of the U.S. shale oil boom in a two-country DSGE model where countries produce crude oil, refined oil products, and a non-oil good. The model incorporates different types of crude oil that are imperfect substitutes for each other as inputs into the refining sector. The model is calibrated to match oil market and macroeconomic data for the U.S. and the rest of the world (ROW). We investigate the implications of a significant increase in U.S. light crude oil production similar to the shale oil boom. Consistent with the data, our model predicts that light oil prices decline, U.S. imports of light oil fall dramatically, and light oil crowds out the use of medium crude by U.S. refiners. In addition, fuel prices fall and U.S. GDP rises. We then use our model to examine the potential implications of the former U.S. crude oil export ban. The model predicts that the ban was a binding constraint in 2013 through 2015. We find that the distortions introduced by the policy are greatest in the refining sector. Light oil prices become artificially low in the U.S., and U.S. refineries produce inefficiently high amount of refined products, but the impact on refined product prices and GDP are negligible.

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Occurrences of an old phenomenon, the expropriation of foreign-owned property, peaked in the 1970s when virtually every significant oil-producing developing country nationalized its oil. Nationalization was again on the rise in the 2000s. Using novel data, this paper quantitatively evaluates the effects of nationalization. First, the paper finds significant productivity losses associated with nationalization in a sample of oil-producing countries. Venezuela in particular experienced a striking decline in productivity. Second, the paper presents a new channel through which nationalization affects productivity: a long-term pre-announcement can shift the composition of the workforce with a huge decline in highly skilled foreign workers and result in higher extraction and lower exploration. Guided by a quantitative dynamic partial equilibrium framework disciplined by features of the Venezuelan data, this paper then evaluates the effects of nationalization. A comparison of the simulated and time series data shows that the model can explain about 80% of the productivity pattern over 1961–1980 in the Venezuelan oil industry. Counterfactual experiments suggest that the shift in the composition of the workforce is important in accounting for the productivity pattern. Furthermore, if nationalization had been sudden, long-run losses would have been lower.