The US currently gets more of it's oil from North Dakota than Saudi Arabia, thanks to fracking.
U.S. oil imports hit a 28-year-low in June as Americans imported less than 4.7 million barrels per day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Imports have not been this low since April 1986 when we imported 4.6 million barrels a day.
Imports amounted to 25% of the 18.833 million barrels of oil the United States used in June.
That 28-year low is a dramatic reversal of fortune. Just 8 years ago, in August 2006, the United States averaged imports of more than 13.4 million barrels per day. That was an all-time high.
We have cut those imports by two-thirds.To be fair, we don't get much of our foreign oil from Saudi Arabia. It's too far to haul it when there are neighbors much closer like Canada, Mexico and Venezuela producing more than they consume. But the trend is in the right direction. Hopefully, the democrats and environmentalists won't be able to completely derail it.
Even if the federal government mandated a doubling of gas mileage in our cars, we would not have seen such a rapid drop in imports.
Sean Hackbarth of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce credits hydraulic fracturing -- fracking -- for this reversal and he is absolutely right.
Production in Texas in June topped 3 million barrels per day.
And the Bakken fields in North Dakota produced 1.093 million barrels per day. That's 77,000 barrels per day more than the 1.016 million barrels per day we imported from Saudi Arabia.
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