“The U.S. imported approximately 10.6 million barrels per day of petroleum in 2012 from about 80 countries. We exported 3.2 MMbd of crude oil and petroleum products, resulting in net imports (imports minus exports) equaling 7.4 MMbd.
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Here is an EIA graph of net imports of crude oil and petroleum products that runs through january 2014. in January 2014 net imports of of crude oil and petroleum products were 5.54 MMbd
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=mttntus2&f=m
So net imports are falling fast—or roughly 1 million barrels a year between 2012 and 2014. The EIA expects oil production rises of each and all of 2014 and 2015 to be at about 1 million barrels a year. http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/steo/archives/May14.pdf
The EIA also expects production increases to flatten out after 2015. But I think steep production rises will occur for a couple more years because of the enormous recoverable reserves in the Permian basin have barely begun to be tapped. Most of the new drilling is occurring in the permian basin. Sometime next year imho production increases from the permian basin will go parabolic as they have for the last three years in the baaken and the eagle ford. So that just as the eagle ford and baaken production increases start to flat line —the permian basin production numbers will explode.
Interesting. I’ll look up some information on the Permian basin. By the way, I’m in an area on the Rockies, where bipartisan NIMBYs and crooks chased away some good natural gas and uranium exploration projects. Disgusting. They were informed that the projects wouldn’t hurt groundwater, but they refuse such projects on the irrational basis of possible associations between any known existance of proposed projects and the local, mythical property values and tourism.