ICYMI: The Commerce Department has updated its database on U.S. trade statistics after erroneously reporting that U.S. producers had exported thousands of barrels of domestic crude oil to South Korea and Mexico in 2011-2012.
Chairman Murkowski’s energy committee staff noticed the error on the U.S. International Trade Commission’s Interactive Trade DataWeb, which provides monthly data on national trade, including imports and exports and the balance of trade, and alerted the Census Bureau.
The Interactive Trade DataWeb incorrectly reported shipments of U.S. produced crude oil to South Korea in 2011, and to Mexico in 2011 and 2012.
While current law allows for the routine licensing of foreign re-exports from the United States to other countries, exports of crude oil produced in the United States are generally prohibited. Alaska oil production is exempted from the export ban, but no exports from Alaska occurred in 2011.
At our request, the Census Bureau reviewed the Mexico data for December 2014, and of the South Korea data for March 2015. The reviews were completed in March and April of this year, respectively, and concluded that the data had been incorrectly entered.
All of the shipments tagged as “crude oil” were actually exports of petroleum products or chemical products, which are allowed under the law. Commerce has revised the database.
The corrections are an important reminder that any analysis is only as good as the reliability of the underlying data. The attached PDFs show the corrected data.