Basically because oil is cheaper to transport than it is to refine. Including more sentences because of the character limit thing that always deletes my single-sentence concise answers. More. Sentences.
All oil is not the same. There may be additional types, but there is heavy crude oil and light crude oil. Certain types of oil are meant to make certain types of refined fuel. The type we put in our cars, unleaded gasoline, is made from a type of oil that we don’t have much of here. The type we drill is used in other types of vehicles like ships and planes, I think.
We are really good at refining poor quality crude oil, but we produce mostly high quality “sweet” oil.
Other, less developed countries are bad at refining and need high quality sweet crude.
We buy cheap, low quality crude to refine into high value gasoline and other petrochemicals while exporting our valuable high quality sweet crude to less developed countries.
It is a net win for the US because we trade expensive crude for cheap crude and get to pocket the difference.
Comments
Basically because oil is cheaper to transport than it is to refine. Including more sentences because of the character limit thing that always deletes my single-sentence concise answers. More. Sentences.
All oil is not the same. There may be additional types, but there is heavy crude oil and light crude oil. Certain types of oil are meant to make certain types of refined fuel. The type we put in our cars, unleaded gasoline, is made from a type of oil that we don’t have much of here. The type we drill is used in other types of vehicles like ships and planes, I think.
The US exports light sweet crude, which is more valuable than the heavy crude they import from Canada.
Basically, they sell the more valuable crude and use the cheaper stuff because they have a capacity to refine it.
We are really good at refining poor quality crude oil, but we produce mostly high quality “sweet” oil.
Other, less developed countries are bad at refining and need high quality sweet crude.
We buy cheap, low quality crude to refine into high value gasoline and other petrochemicals while exporting our valuable high quality sweet crude to less developed countries.
It is a net win for the US because we trade expensive crude for cheap crude and get to pocket the difference.
The U.S. exports more than it imports overall.
They are different kinds of oil. We import the kind we prefer and export the kind that other countries use.
Some of what we export is oil we’ve refined, which is then transported to places that don’t or can’t refine their own oil.