--- title: TIME Explains: U.S. Energy Independence | TIME description: TIME senior editor Bryan Walsh explains a hot topic from the presidential race, whether the U.S. can truly be energy independent canonical: https://time.com/video/XmcuBM5C/ og:title: TIME Explains: U.S. Energy Independence og:description: TIME senior editor Bryan Walsh explains a hot topic from the presidential race, whether the U.S. can truly be energy independent og:url: https://time.com/video/XmcuBM5C/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/XmcuBM5C/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: TIME Explains: U.S. Energy Independence twitter:description: TIME senior editor Bryan Walsh explains a hot topic from the presidential race, whether the U.S. can truly be energy independent twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/XmcuBM5C/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # TIME Explains: U.S. Energy Independence > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: TIME Explains: U.S. Energy Independence [Watch (HLS stream): TIME Explains: U.S. Energy Independence](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/XmcuBM5C.m3u8) (2:26)  _Published 2012-11-01. TIME senior editor Bryan Walsh explains a hot topic from the presidential race, whether the U.S. can truly be energy independent_ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:28 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Time Explains: Energy Efficiency](/video/DDVcGaZL/) ### Time Explains: Energy Efficiency [TIME Explains: Solar Energy](/video/0isWJF6a/) ### TIME Explains: Solar Energy [TIME Explains: Challenges to America's Energy Independence](/video/DqaAia9D/) ### TIME Explains: Challenges to America's Energy Independence --- ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] You've been hearing a lot about the United States becoming energy independent in recent debates. This has been something that politicians have been dreaming about for decades really. But here's what you really need to know about the subject. [ MUSIC ] American Presidents since Nixon have been promising to get the United States off foreign oil and all we have seen since that time, really, is America importing more and more oil. This is actually coming closer to happening than it ever has before. Right now, the US is in a huge domestic oil production boom. The US may actually be on pace to eclipse Saudi Arabia as the world's biggest oil producer. However just because the United States is producing a lot of oil, doesn't mean that we're gonna actually become energy independent, meaning free from all imports. And that's for a few reasons. One, Americans use a lot of oil. We use millions of barrels of oil each day, much more than we produce, so we'll, we'll still need to import more oil from other countries, and that's unlikely to change any time soon. But what's probably more important to you at the pump in which you actually pay for gasoline is that, oil is not a domestic product in a sense that it's produced here in the United States, only consumed here in the US. It goes into that big global oil market and then people buy it at that whatever the market price will bear. The result being that even with more oil coming from the United States, it's likely to remain pretty expensive into the future. So we may be headed towards days where $ 3. 50 a gallon gas, even $ 4. 00 a gallon gas could co- exist with a, a, an America that's still producing a great deal of oil. [ MUSIC ] For the election, that's a bit problematic. Because you have someone like Governor Romney who says he wants to make America energy independent by 2020. But again, that's not something that's likely to impact you when you're actually paying for gas. President Obama, has also emphasized the idea of producing more energy here in the United States, but he also talks a lot more about reducing consumption through energy efficiency. One of President Obama's achievements in his first four years of office is actually increasing auto efficiency, getting your cars to get more miles per gallon. If you can do that, you can actually cushion the United States against any increases in the cost of oil or cost of gasoline going forward. And that's really the bottom line at the end of the day. As long as we all remain as dependent on oil as we are now we will be paying a lot for it. Even if more of it comes from the United States. 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