The myth of US 'energy independence'
With gasoline prices now topping $4 per gallon on average, a lot of American drivers feel like the U.S. energy economy is going backwards. Didn’t we used to be energy independent? How can gas prices get so high if the United States is the world’s biggest oil producer? What happened to the fracking revolution? And why do U.S. gas prices depend on oil supply from Russia, on the other side of the world?
The short answer is that America benefits greatly from domestic oil and gas production—but the nation is also dependent on foreign energy in ways no president can undo. In terms of all energy, combined—fossil fuels, nuclear power, renewables and so on—the United States began producing more than it consumes in 2012, as the first chart below shows. If you consider “energy independence” to be a net surplus of primary energy, from all sources, then sure, the United States is energy independent.
But fuels are not typically interchangeable. You can't run a car on nuclear power or switch your home heating source if one type of fuel gets more expensive. So it doesn’t make much sense, from a consumer perspective, to talk about all energy in the aggregate. Yet some analysts and politicians, including Presidents Obama and Trump, have boasted about energy independence as if a surplus of one type of energy can offset a shortfall of another type. Usually, it can't.
The United States is not oil-independent
With regard to oil, the main component in gasoline, the U.S. consumes more than it produces, and has for decades. Flatly stated, the United States is not oil-independent, and hasn’t been since the early days of oil production. There has been a big increase in U.S. oil output since 2008, due largely to the advent of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Fracking has downsides, including possible environmental damage from toxic chemicals used in the process and intrusive drilling operations in areas where there had never been oil or gas operations before. Still, it has catapulted the United States into pole position as the world's top oil producer.
U.S. oil production in 2019, the most recent peak, was 140% more than in 2008. That surge in domestic output has narrowed the gap between the amount of oil we produce and consume—but the gap was huge to start with and Americans still burn 38% more oil than U.S. drillers produce. The second chart above shows the difference over time.
As with oil, natural gas production has soared during the last decade, since fracking helps tap natural gas deposits, too. U.S. production of natural gas first exceeded consumption in 2017, and the gap has widened since then. In mathematical terms, you could say we're natural-gas independent, because we produce more than we consume. The third chart above shows that.
Coal, not surprisingly, has declined as a U.S. energy source, because it's one of the dirtiest forms of energy. We do produce more coal than we consume, however, with the rest exported to other countries. So you could say the United States is coal-independent, too. That's in the fourth chart above.
Here’s another confusing claim: America is a net oil exporter. This is true, if you include oil and refined oil products such as gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. U.S. exports of oil and oil products exceeded imports in 2020 and 2021, again, largely because of the fracking surge. But in terms of raw crude, the U.S. has long been a net importer—importing than we export—and still is. Net imports are a lot smaller than they used to be, because of the surge in U.S. production. Yet we still rely on oil from Canada, Mexico, the Middle East and many other places to meet U.S. demand for gasoline and other finished products.
Energy markets are complex and, in the United States, at least, driven mostly by private-sector decisions rather than government diktat. The American president can’t control oil output the way Russian President Vladimir Putin or the Saudi ruling family can. Producers decide how much oil to drill, and whom to sell it to, based on the profit motive. Since 2015, when President Obama changed the rules to allow the export of U.S. crude, American drillers can sell oil wherever in the world they can legally get the best price.
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'In the real world, energy independence doesn't exist'
It might seem logical to use all the oil produced in the United States to meet domestic needs, and only import what’s necessary after that. But open markets ungoverned by any national energy policy don’t work that way. It’s not as easy to transport oil as it is canned goods or airplane passengers, since there are many limitations on where pipelines and oil-laden railways can run. Most U.S. oil comes from five states—Texas, North Dakota, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Alaska—and producers want to sell it where costs are lowest. It can be cheaper to export Texas oil through ports such as Galveston or Corpus Christi, for instance, than to ship it to refiners on the East Coast.
“Sometimes it’s a lot cheaper to get cargo from Rotterdam to the East Coast than to push it from Texas,” oil analyst Dan Dicker of The Energy Word explained to Yahoo Finance in 2020. “It can be immensely cheaper to take oil from the Middle East than from our wells in West Texas. In the real world, energy independence doesn’t exist.”
Hardly any country can shut itself off from the global oil market and enjoy cheaper prices purely because of bounteous domestic supplies. Saudi Arabia may be one exception, but when a shock threatens supply anywhere it pretty much raises prices everywhere. That’s why the disruption of oil supplies from Russia, the world’s third-largest producer, has sent U.S. oil prices close to $120 per barrel and gas prices above $4 per gallon, even though the United States imports very little Russian oil. Virtually every oil producer is selling into the same market, at whatever price global supply and demand determines.
There have been some calls to prohibit U.S. producers from exporting oil, as was the case before 2015. But that wouldn’t necessarily lower U.S. gasoline prices. The key factor is how much oil U.S. firms produce, which the government doesn’t get to decide. If Washington limited U.S. producers’ ability to sell oil profitably to foreigners, drillers wouldn’t produce the same amount of oil and sell it for less profit, or no profit, to American refiners. If shut off from some profitable markets, they’d probably produce less and make sure they keep profit margins up. Some analysts think a ban on oil exports would be such a disincentive to drill that U.S. pump prices might even go up.
One thing that could genuinely make the United States energy independent is the robust development of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. That type of energy is harder to store, which makes it less suited to shipping and selling in distant markets. Solar energy can travel long distances across high-transmission power lines, but it can’t be stored in a barrel or canister, the way oil and natural gas can. Batteries are a form of storage, but they’re not fully developed, which makes wind and solar best as regional energy sources for the foreseeable future.
Renewables, however, aren’t coming fast enough to offset supply disruptions caused by Russia’s barbarous invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent sanctions on Russia, which don’t yet directly target Russia’s energy exports but could, soon. President Biden is scrambling to persuade OPEC nations such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to produce more, while here in America many U.S. producers are starting to crank up idle rigs, to capitalize on high prices. As long as global prices stay high, however, U.S. prices will, too, and Russia's aggression will cause pain for oil consumers virtually everywhere.
Rick Newman is a columnist and author of four books, including "Rebounders: How Winners Pivot from Setback to Success.” Follow him on Twitter: @rickjnewman. You can also send confidential tips.
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