The things you learn on a hooker board...
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-G...dependent.html
This graphic gives a more nuanced picture of events over time. It shows that our march toward energy independence stalled in 2015 and 2016. What happened in those years? That’s when Saudi Arabia tried to put the U.S. shale drillers out of business by flooding the market with oil and collapsing the price.
In 2017, we resumed the march toward energy independence. That happens to be the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency, but it also corresponds to Saudi Arabia waving the white flag and trying to prop oil prices back up. Between 2016 and 2018, the annual average price of West Texas Intermediate rose more than 50%. That price recovery helped boost oil production.
However, the graph also shows that once we first gained energy independence — which happened in April 2020 on a rolling 12-month basis — we have never lost it. But the downward trend switched directions in June 2021 (which covers the period of June 2020 through May 2021 — portions of both the Trump and Biden presidencies)
Are we still energy independent? The charts say so...
