WASHINGTON: America’s dependency on foreign oil has been a major issue in the energy debate for many, many years. No one knows when the issue first gained notoriety, but it really hit home in the 1970s with the rise of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, increases in crude oil and gasoline prices, an exorbitant inflation rate and lines at gasoline stations.
Crude oil production in the U.S. had been on a downhill slide for 40 years or more; then, along came a Greek immigrant oilman from Houston with an idea. George P. Mitchell believed he could get enough natural gas out of shale rock to make a profit. Mitchell drilled hundreds of wells into the Barnett Shale just north of Fort Worth, and as time passed, he developed a “slick water” process allowing natural gas to flow from the shale.
News spread about his success, and more wildcatters began experimenting. Some reasoned that if the process of drilling horizontally through the shale and then fracturing the rock worked for natural gas, it might work for oil, too.
In fact, the process worked so well that crude oil production in the U.S. grew from a low of 4.988 million barrels of oil per day in 2005 to a historic high of 9.428 million barrels per day in 2014 — an 89 percent increase in just nine years. This dramatic reversal of 35 years of declining production astonished the oil industry from Dubai to Moscow to Houston.
America passed Russia and Saudi Arabia in total petroleum production in 2014, and now produces more liquid fuels than any other country, according to the Energy Information Administration. The U.S. produced 14.021 million barrels per day of petroleum liquids, compared to 11.624 million barrels per day in Saudi Arabia and 10.847 million barrels per day in Russia. The U.S. is the world’s top natural gas producer, too, producing 25,728 billion cubic feet per day compared to second place Russia at 20,437 billion cubic feet per day.
This dramatic turnaround continues to have an enormous positive impact on the U.S. economy and national security. Crude oil imports have declined from 60 percent of total consumption in 2005 to 24 percent in 2015. The U.S. is importing less oil than any time in the last 45 years.
