A grassroots movement in the Texas panhandle pushing back against OPEC by calling for quotas on oil and gas imports.
Related: Iranian Oil Will Add to Global Glut
Several pro-industry groups in the Texas panhandle have come together to create the Panhandle Import Reduction Initiative, an effort to propose a ban on shale oil imports from abroad. The group is working to gather signatures and raise $100,000 that will allow them to present the plan to the next president after the elections in 2017.
Supporters of the initiative are angry that oil-producing countries failed to reach an agreement to freeze oil production levels Sunday in Doha, Qatar and the announcement that OPEC will increase production again.
“What we propose to the country and to the industry is a return to President Eisenhower in 1959, when he, by proclamation, established import quotas on foreign oil,” Fine said. “We will take care of Canada, our hemispheric ally. But OPEC, no. We’re going to rigorously put quotas on the import of oil.”
In 1959, President Eisenhower stablished a similar quota system that remained in effect for 14 years in order to sustain a healthy oil industry for national security purposes.
In January, the Obama Administration entered into an historic and controversial nuclear deal with Iran that includes lifting economic sanctions, which could add millions of barrels to the global glut.