The Truth About United States Oil Imports
If you ask an average American where the U.S. gets the majority of its oil, the most common response will be the Middle East. According to a recent poll from randalolson.com, 3 out of 4 Americans believe that the U.S. gets most of its oil from countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Contrary to that belief, the United States imports most of its petroleum from the Western Hemisphere.
In reality petroleum imports from the Middle East's Persian Gulf only make up 28% of the United States oil sources.
As you can see from the graph above, the U.S. primarily received oil from countries in North and South America as of 2012. In fact, Canada makes up the largest percentage of U.S. oil imports according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration as of 2013. Canada exported 1.14 billion barrels of oil to the U.S. which is the equivalent of 21.7 billion gallons of gasoline. Saudi Arabia was a distant second, exporting 485 million barrels of oil.
While countries like Canada, Saudi Arabia, and Mexico do account for billions of barrels of oil being imported into the United States, the amount of imports is far less than the amount of oil being produced by the U.S. itself. As of 2012, 60% of the petroleum in the United States was being produced inside the country. This means that foreign oil imports account for 40% of oil inside the U.S. which may surprise people who believe all of our oil is coming from the Middle East.
So next time you hear someone talking about how reliant we are on the Middle East for petroleum imports, tell them they have no idea what they are talking about. Yes, the U.S. receives a large amount of oil from Saudi Arabia, but it is no where near the amount exported from Canada. It also seems that we are not as reliant on foreign oil as everyone thinks considering that most of our oil is self-produced. Only once has importing of petroleum been greater than our production of it (1997-2010), but before that our oil production was even greater than it is now. Do some research and you will find that we are well on our way to even larger production of oil in the United States, and maybe even one day we won't need to import any at all... Well one can dream.
Share This Article
