You don't seem to understand how supply and demand work.
Lets say we produce 100% of our own oil, because we can. Some 3rd world country comes along and hits a huge river of the **** and dumps it into the market at half the price. Yeah, we buy their oil. Because it's cheaper and cheaper is better for the economy. It doesn't change the fact that we are independent. It just means, for the time cheap oil is available, we're going to utilize that resource. If anything should happen to that cheap oil supply, such as a war in said 3rd world country, we go back to 100% capacity.
That's economics 101. You're trying to argue a semantic point when the cause and effect have already been established.
And this is the point that you are not getting. What happens when an oil producer is so large that they can flood the market and set the worldwide price? They "control" the market. They control the supply. Because they can determine the price being, say $70/barrel, we succumb to their cheaper prices and buy it.
As long as there are entities like OPEC that can control the price of oil around the globe, we are NOT independent. We are dependent on their control of the market.
We cannot produce 100% of our own oil. It is there for the drilling. But the combination of the environmentalists, lawyers, left wing policies and OPEC's massive control of the market have combined and kept us from tapping into those reserves. We are either thwarted by OPEC, the lawyers or regulations and policies.
I will repeat, from that article:
But while a revolution in U.S. and Canadian oil drilling has significantly reduced the country's reliance on imports from OPEC since 2007 — when annual imports from the cartel were nearly 6 million barrels a day — the United States is far from energy independent. - translated - we are dependent.
One of the reasons that we are dependent on foreign oil is the expense of getting to our own. OPEC demonstrated this when fracking began making a dent in their business. It costs a lot of money to get the oil we have access to. And we have to develop the infrastructure. The OPEC countries have sunk costs in their infrastructure and have been benefiting from the economies of scale of that infrastructure. Fracking, as one example, is very expensive. When fracking began to make a dent in their business, OPEC simply dropped the oil prices to make fracked oil too expensive for us to consume.
That is controlling the market. That means we are dependent. Even though we have the oil, we cannot inexpensively get to it. Dependence on the lower cost supply from the Middle east is the result.
https://www.stratfor.com/image/enduring-us-reliance-foreign-oil
But despite climbing output levels, the United States and Canada are still far from achieving self-sufficiency in oil production. Even with the export ban in place, the United States continues to rely on foreign oil. For example, U.S. imports from the Persian Gulf totaled nearly 1.9 million barrels per day in 2014 — an amount higher than that seen between 1980 and 1998, despite lower production levels at the time.
Every U.S. administration since the 1973 oil embargo has touted the concept of energy independence as a way for the country to become less dependent on foreign oil suppliers. But it is an unattainable goal, even if the United States were to produce enough oil to meet its domestic needs. The United States stands at the center of the global economy, and its economic prospects are intimately linked to those of the world. In short, with or without the ban on crude exports, the United States cannot fully isolate itself from fluctuations in the global oil market.
Now you can keep saying we are energy independent if you want. The fact is, we are not.
If you want to rebut- yet again - do so by justifying your statement - "First of all, we've already reached oil independence." Every authority on the matter disagrees with you.
