But total petroleoum exports will remain the same (or increase) when you add the refined and unrefined products. Plus, the Saudis will charge us extra to refine it.
It's not a bad development. The barriers to building new refineries enacted by lefties and their cronies are real. The increasing demand for gasoline has to be met somehow.
Short term, an increase in global refining capacity is good for the US, but it is foolish to forego building more domestic refineries. One bad thing that might come about as a result of this is that plans for domestic refineries are delayed even more, since "the Saudis will refine it, so we don't need to worry about it".
We've been importing most of our gasoline imports from Venezuela over the past few years. Given the situation down there, I think having multiple sources of imported gasoline is an excellent idea.
We definitely need more refineries domestically, too. It was one thing to depend on imported crude. But now we could have all the crude in the world and still not have the domestic ability to turn it into enough gasoline for our needs.