Why Gas Prices Have Gone Down

The Real Reason

by Elizabeth Kilgore Jan. 16. 2015

"They" could tell you that oil prices have gone down because the price to ship it has lowered. "They" could tell you the drop is because the other countries are selling it cheaper. "They" could tell you a lot of things but that wouldn't change the facts. Gas prices have gone down all over the world. There recently was a series of events that accorded that has lead to the drop in oil prices. Events that haven't been hidden, but if you weren't too interested in oil it could have slipped passed you. We all know the oil business has been on ice for a long time and who is sicker of its inner workings besides the people who buy gas no one really knows, but what you might know is that America and Canada have decided to expand the Keystone Pipe Line. The Keystone Pipeline is an oil pipeline that runs from Canada to America. Here's a map of what it looks like today.

As you can see the pipeline runs from Alberta in Canada to Oklahoma and Illinois in America. The expansion of the keystone pipeline will be called Keystone XL Pipeline and there is the reason for the decrease in gas prices. The new pipeline called Keystone XL Pipeline will run the span of America here's the map that shows what it will look like.

The red dotted line shows the parts of the pipeline that will be added to the pipeline and the parts that will be expanded. Here we see that the pipeline will be added onto in Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska. The expansion will run through Oklahoma and Texas. Which is good for American oil prices right? Maybe but there is a bigger picture here that some people seem to be missing. In 1975 America made the 1975 oil export ban which bans America for export oil to other countries, but America is trying to have that ban lifted. Why? Take a look at the photo below.

America wants to export gas to Latin America and Europe to help stop the sky-high gas prices that other countries are forced to pay around the world. So there is the answer. The gas prices have lowered because the top oil exporting countries are trying to show America that they don't need the US to export gas. Their hope was that if they lowered the prices that America would stop trying to lift the 1975 oil export ban, and would not export oil to the world. Saudi Arabia even said that a lower price may discourage expansion of the shale oil, but the US is thinking of the long-term effect, effects that would keep oil prices down throughout the whole world for a long length of time not just for two weeks or a month, at least that's what they say. The truth is that America might not have to lift the 1975 oil ban on a technicality. The technicality is that the oil being pumped through the pipeline isn't American oil at all its Canadian oil. That means that American and Canada have partnered up to help ship Canadian oil to the rest of the world. Since American didn't buy the oil they are just supplying the route the oil will take to get to other countries, this means it's not American oil. The 1975 ban only applies to US oil, so the ban doesn't really need to be lifted in order to export Canadian oil.