Oil import quotas sounded simple, straightforward. These were not. As time went on, their management became more and more Byzantine. Indeed, under the Mandatory Oil Import Program, as it was known, there were continuing fights over allocations, struggles over interpretations, searches for loopholes, and the ever-more-intense hunt for exceptions and exemptions. Over the years, the program became increasingly barnacled and distorted. A brisk market developed, not in oil itself, but in oil import “tickets” or rights to bring in oil. Some parts of the refining industry ended up, in effect,
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