If we refine more than we use, and now want to export crude, why are we importing any crude from the middle east?
That doesn’t make sense.
We import about 7 million barrels a day of crude oil for our refineries, in addition to the crude we produce ourselves.
But all crude is not the same. The industry has spent many billions of dollars upgrading the domestic refineries to use the heavy sour crude. It is the cheapest per barrel while containing more BTUs per barrel. Canadian oil sands for example.
Most of our increased crude oil production comes from light sweet. It makes sense to keep importing the cheap stuff that efficiently runs in our refineries while exporting the expensive light sweet.