Thanks Fracking: US Oil Imports At A 20 Year Low

I’m a free trade sort of guy, so generally I think America ought to get its goods and services from wherever makes sense in marketplace. If that’s someplace in America, great. If not, that’s ok too. Thinks like “trade deficits” are the result of economic illiteracy and media sensationalism.

That being said, I was never entirely comfortable with the fact that our country has been so dependent on oil from nations that aren’t exactly our friends. So the fact that America’s energy revolution, made possible by hydraulic fracturing, is seeing our supply of energy come more from within our borders than from without is good news.

As Mark Perry points out, US crude oil imports are at a 20-year low, a decline directly proportional to the increase in domestic oil production:

This turn around in US oil production has everything to do with fracking. That technique, along with some other innovations, is allowing us to reach and pump oil we could never reach before. It has opened up entire new oceans of oil and natural gas resources in this country, and has provided one of the few bright spots in the national economy.