Study: Lifting Crude Exports Will Not Raise U.S. Gas Prices

A highly anticipated study by the U.S. Energy Information Administration will show that domestic oil prices will not rise if the U.S. ban on oil exports is lifted, the agency's top administrator said Thursday.

Domestic gasoline prices are set in the global market, and the price of U.S. gasoline is tied more closely to the global benchmark price than WTI, the U.S. benchmark, EIA administrator Adam Sieminski said.

"If you allowed the ban to be lifted, WTI prices could indeed go up, but it probably wouldn't do a great deal one way or the other with gasoline prices,' Sieminski said.

Sieminski, a former chief energy economist for Deutsche Bank, made the comments while taking questions about the issue during an energy forum in New York City on Thursday. He said the agency embarked on the study to help provide policy makers with independent data they can use to evaluate whether the 1970s-era ban should be lifted.

He said he hopes to release the study before the mid-term elections on Nov 4.

The report by EIA, the statistics arm of the Department of Energy, is highly anticipated by analysts and politicians because it will be the first major report not funded directly or indirectly by energy companies and others that have a stake in the debate on reversing the trade restriction.

Sieminski said the agency is also doing other research on the issue, including how much of the new light-sweet crude oil that is being produced can be absorbed by domestic refiners and how much it will cost to reconfigure U.S. refineries that are wired to process heavier crudes.

(Reporting By Jarrett Renshaw, Reuters; Editing by Bernard Orr)