Politicized Implementation of U.s. Oil Import Quotas, 1959-1973

The oil import quota system in place from 1959 to 1973 restricted imports to an amount equal to the difference between the federal government’s estimate of domestic oil demand and the estimate of domestic oil supply. But, of course, nothing in industry-protection policy can be easy, so the policy contained a number of adjustments and exclusions.

Chief among exclusion was the “overland exemption” for imports from Canada and Mexico. Hilarity ensues.

120. There is an overland “exemption” for imports from Canada and Mexico. The overland exemption has been construed to include imports from Mexico which are transported by tanker to Brownsville, Texas, where they are entered in bond, transferred to trucks which cross the Mexican border, then re-enter the United States where they are released from bond and are said to have entered by overland means. The oil is reloaded aboard tankers for shipment by sea to the U.S. East Coast. On the other hand, the exemption has not been extended to shipments from Canada across the Great Lakes or to rail shipments from Canada to Ketchikan in Southern Alaska because of a short inland waterway crossing by rail car ferry. The “overland exemption” for both Canadian and Mexican imports are further limited quantitatively by intergovernmental agreements.

From Cabinet Task Force on Oil Import Control, The Oil Import Question, (1970), at pp. 9-10.