US Petroleum and Gasoline Use, Production, and Import-Export from the EIA.
The US EIA or Energy Information Administration clearly distinguishes between total Petroeum, and that which goes into gasoline. This helps clear up some import-export and energy independence statements.
In 2020, the US (in mbpd, or million barrels per day):
Produced 18.40 mbpd;
Consumed 18.12 mbpd;
Exported 8.51 mbpd; and
Imported 7.6 mbpd.
That means that we made 0.55 mbpd net exports for the first time. Of the imports, 5.88 mbpd were crude, and we exported 3.18 mbpd of crude. Of the imports, 1.98 mbpd were petroleum products, namely, gasoline, heating oil, diesel fuel, and jet fuel. I know that nothing adds up exactly.
Does this make the US energy independent, at least in oil? Nope. The US is a very large country, and pipelines and refineries don’t run freely all over the place. So it is easier to import foreign oil to California and the West, for example, and export excesses from other states in other ports.
Here is the breakdown for how the various compounds of hydrogen and carbon in oil get separated for different uses. The 42 gallons in a barrel of crude make 45 gallons of products.
Here is a pie chart with more specificity by percentages:
Here is how oil production has evolved recently with fracking increasing production (light brown), and exports (yellow), while imports (green), and net imports (dark brown), are declining. Note that the very tiny excess of exports (yellow) over imports (green) is a very small part of the overall picture.
Frackers have estimated that they are roughly half way through the resources to be drilled, and they exploited the easiest and cheapest areas first.
I think the other most relevant thing is that consumption has roughly leveled off since around 1995, but part of the last two year’s dip is due to the pandemic.
We also note that increased production due to fracking has increased almost linearly since about 2008, which was 14 years ago. That spans parts of five Presidential terms. Fracking’s success and the achievement of net exports does not go to any individual President.
In President Biden’s oil sanctions speech, he parlayed the expected Republican criticism of our oil production by pointing out that of US inland drilling, 90% of the sites are on private land. Only 10% are on Federal land, and their are 9,000 permits in the hands of oil companies which they have not used. On the blocking of the Keystone pipeline, I will add that a lot of that oil has been shipped in oil tank cars on trains.
The US is the world’s largest oil producer. Within the US, the top crude producing areas are: Texas, 43.0%; Gulf Offshore, 14.6%; North Dakota, 10.4%; New Mexico, 9.2%; Oklahoma, 4.1%; and Colorado, 4.0%. Those total 85.0% of domestic crude production.
Russia’s imports to the US last year were anomalously high in 2021 because a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico damaged the LOOP, or the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, which is 18 miles offshore, and services offloading some of the largest oil tankers in the world. From Reuters, Russian imports were 672,000 bpd, of which 30% or 199,000 bpd were crude, and 473,000 bpd were refined. In 2022, Russian crude has dropped down to 57,000 bpd. That, of course, is only 3% of US daily consumption. 80 million Russian barrels are on ships on the ocean looking for a port.
