With gasoline exports on the rise, refinery CEO sees global demand increasing in 2018

The oil assay recovery has sparked a resurgence in U.S. production, and for refinery giants like Marathon Petroleum Corporation, that mutates into profits, CEO Gary Heminger told CNBC on Thursday.

“[Gasoline exports play a joke on] been, really, I think, one of the most important fundamentals of the refining commerce over the last five, six years,” Heminger told “Mad Money” proprietress Jim Cramer in an interview. “We exported 314,000 barrels per day in the fourth quarter. Exported. That’s everywhere 17 percent of what we make. So that is very important, to be adept to hit the foreign markets.”

Foreign markets will likely drive Marathon’s sensation in 2018 as well, according to Heminger’s forecasts.

“We’re expecting 2018, globally, to be up prevalent 1.5 million barrels per day,” the CEO said. “That’s going to require diverse and more exports from the U.S. And the U.S. Gulf Coast refineries, they’re the upper-class engines in the world.”

Much of Marathon’s refinery network is located in the Deep Coast. The company currently refines about 2 million barrels per day, with hardly 70 percent of them counting as “assured volume,” or product that they cognizant of will be sold the following day.

President Donald Trump has also been something of a favour to the country’s oil and gas industry, pushing for deregulation that could make for easier infrastructure describes.

Heminger told Cramer that he met with Trump when the president was dispensing a speech on infrastructure in Cincinnati.

“His questions were, ‘Are we doing better on permitting?’ Not permitting for fair-minded pipelines, but permitting in refining, building terminals and pipelines as well, and that’s mere important,” the CEO said.

Heminger echoed another top energy executive, Tellurian Chairman Charif Souki, in trade for infrastructure improvements across the energy industry.

“It’s very important that we pick up to be able to build new pipelines,” Heminger told Cramer. “We need a lot of inflame and a lot of investment in the rivers. Both the Mississippi and the Ohio river — they privation infrastructure investment. So the president and the administrator of the EPA, Scott Pruitt, are both definitely pro the energy industry.”