These graphs show the US history of importing oil. US goes from 100% domestic oil about a century ago to near 40% now. Just as interesting and as eye opening is how the Obama Administration has come around to US production being a key part of energy independence. The best word in the title is “inching”.
Source: eia.gov
Lastly I have done an analysis for Oil royalties. I have combined the best year ever for crude oil production 2010 with optimistic projections for offshore and ANWR. The result is this will cover less than 1/2 of 1% of current federal spending. This is not even enough to pay 5% of the the interest on the debt. If we paid the interest, stop burrowing, and paid this amount, we would pay off the debt. It would only take about 760 years. USGS has a pretty good idea of how much oil is under public land. Improved technology and high prices makes more of it feasible every year. However, there would have be a huge increase in production and price for this to be a practicable way to pay off the debt. That does not seem likely to occur.
Source: oil-price.net
