‘We don’t need Middle East oil,’ Trump says in Iran speech. Here are the facts
President Donald Trump addressed the nation Wednesday about the conflict with Iran, saying the United States no longer needs to import oil from the Middle East.
“We are now the number one producer of oil and natural gas anywhere in the world. We are independent and we do not need Middle East oil,” the president said.
Federal data shows that’s not completely accurate. The United States is the top oil producing country, according to federal data. But while the U.S. has been able to cut down on energy imports dramatically, we still rely on oil from overseas.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration: “In 2018, U.S. net imports (imports minus exports) of petroleum from foreign countries averaged about 2.34 million barrels per day, equal to about 11% of U.S. petroleum consumption. This was the lowest percentage since 1957.”
Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at the website GasBuddy, said the United States consumes about 20 million barrels of oil each day. Of that, 7 million barrels a day are imported, he said, with 3 million barrels from Canada and the rest from overseas.
“We remain very much reliant on imports. Oil is a global commodity and we are not self sufficient,” De Haan said in an interview with McClatchy News.
According to Forbes, “U.S. dependence on Middle East oil has fallen, but production of Middle Eastern oil has risen by about 5 million (barrels per day) in the past decade. So the rest of the world uses more oil from the region than they did a decade ago.”
In 2018, Forbes reports, Gulf states sent about 1.6 million barrels per day to the United States, more than 15% of U.S. imports. Most of that came from Saudi Arabia and Iraq, the magazine said.
This story was originally published January 8, 2020 at 10:14 AM with the headline "‘We don’t need Middle East oil,’ Trump says in Iran speech. Here are the facts."
