Most US oil is different from the oil we import, and our refineries are geared toward imported oil. With better policy—and less obstruction from Republicans and oil companies—the US could have used the direct subsidies it already provides to fossil fuel companies to switch refineries to process US oil. That did not happen, and we are still beholden to the Middle East for oil.
“The U.S does indeed produce enough oil to meet its own needs. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), in 2020 America produced 18.4 million barrels of oil per day and consumed 18.12 million. And yet that same report reveals that the U.S. imported 7.86 million barrels of oil per day last year.
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Crude is graded according to two main metrics, weight and sweetness. The weight of oil defines how easy it is to refine, or break down into its usable component parts, such as gasoline, jet fuel and diesel. Light crude is the easiest to handle, heavy is the most difficult, with intermediate obviously somewhere in between. The sweetness refers to the sulfur content of unrefined oil. The sweeter it is, the less sulfur it contains.
Most of the oil produced in the U.S. fields in Texas, Oklahoma, and elsewhere is light and sweet, compared to what comes from the Middle East and Russia. The problem is that for many years, imported oil met most of the U.S.’s energy needs, so a large percentage of the refining capacity here is geared towards dealing with oil that is heavier and less sweet than the kind produced here.
A coordinated, forward-looking energy policy over the last few decades would have targeted that issue through subsidies and incentives. That money has been paid out anyway: it wouldn’t have been hard to use it to make America truly energy independent. However, politicians, it seems, would rather keep a situation where periodic energy crises give them a cudgel with which to beat an incumbent.”
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/america-produces-enough-oil-to-meet-its-needs-so-why-do-we-import-crude
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