Republicans tie crude exports to Iran deal: UpdateOREANDA-NEWS. October 05, 2015. A US Senate committee-approved bill to lift the 40-year-old restrictions on crude exports has low odds of becoming law thanks to language inserted by Republican lawmakers designed to retain sanctions on Iran.

The amendment to the crude exports bill, which the Senate Banking Committee voted to approve today, is part of a renewed push by Republicans to scuttle a deal the US and other global powers have reached with Iran to exchange nuclear concessions for relief from oil and petrochemical sanctions. The amendment would retain sanctions on Iran until Tehran pays \\$43bn in court judgments awarded to US citizens for acts of state-sponsored terror.

Republicans in the US House of Representatives separately voted 251-173 today to approve a similar measure, with 10 Democrats supporting the bill. But the bill would struggle to pass in the Senate, where a bloc of Democrats have voted to block similar efforts to dismantle the deal.

The Senate Banking Committee approved the crude exports bill in a 13-9 vote, with bill sponsor senator Heidi Heitkamp (D-North Dakota) joining the Republican majority to advance the measure. The legislation would repeal export restrictions Congress first imposed in 1975 in the wake of the Arab oil embargo but retain some authority for the president to control exports.

But the amendment introduced by senator Pat Toomey (R-Pennsylvania) that would retain sanctions on Iran would make it "extraordinarily difficult" to advance the crude exports bill in the Senate, Heitkamp said before the committee started voting. Republicans nonetheless voted 13-9 to approve the change, joined by senator Robert Menendez (D-New Jersey).

The committee, in a bipartisan vote, defeated another Toomey amendment that would attach a controversial biofuels rider that would also doom the bill in the Senate. The change would have repealed most of the Renewable Fuels Standard by removing its requirement for refiners to blend corn ethanol into the gasoline supply.

Democrats on the committee, with the exception of Heitkamp, have concerns with lifting export restrictions. While some Democrats, including senator Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts), are outright opposed to allowing exports, others such as the committee's ranking member Sherrod Brown (Ohio) said they may be open to a broader bill that had support for renewable energy.

The Senate still has another legislative vehicle that could lift the export restrictions. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee chaired by Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) this summer approved a crude exports bill that would also open more federal land to drilling, but it has yet to get time on the Senate floor for debate.