The United States continues to import a smaller amount of its petroleum from the Middle East, part of a decadeslong trend that has continued under President Joe Biden.
The U.S. gets most of its imported oil from Canada. About 9.8% of U.S. petroleum imports (most of it crude oil) came from Persian Gulf countries in 2020, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data. That has dropped to an average of about 6.6% in the first five months of 2021.
But at a rally in Alabama on Aug. 21, former President Donald Trump said he had gotten the U.S. to a point where “we didn’t need the Middle East.” And now, he said, “we’re going back to them asking them for help.”
Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert similarly tweeted that “Under Trump, we exported American energy. Under Biden, we are back to being dependent on the Middle East again.”
The help from the “Middle East” cited by Trump is a reference to a White House statement that urged OPEC to pump more oil to bring down the price of gasoline in the U.S.
“While OPEC+ recently agreed to production increases, these increases will not fully offset previous production cuts that OPEC+ imposed during the pandemic until well into 2022,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said in the Aug. 11 statement. “At a critical moment in the global recovery, this is simply not enough.”
The announcement was criticized by some conservatives and progressives. Trump described it as Biden now “begging OPEC for more production to please send energy our way.”
Although Trump and Boebert used the broad term “energy,” Boebert’s press secretary, Jake Settle, told us Boebert was referring to the balance between U.S. imports and exports of petroleum.
Petroleum Imports and Exports
An EIA report on oil and petroleum products notes that the U.S. exported about 8.5 million barrels per day of petroleum in 2020, while importing about 7.9 million barrels per day, “making the United States a net annual petroleum exporter for the first time since at least 1949.”
Settle cited an EIA forecast released on Feb. 17 that projected “the U.S. will import more petroleum than it exports in 2021 and 2022.”
“Instead of deregulating the American energy market, Biden’s National Security Advisor called on OPEC to increase production of oil,” Settle said in an email. “Instead of continuing President Trump’s policies that moved America towards energy independence, the Biden administration is moving America back to relying on OPEC and the Middle East for energy security.”
The EIA report, however, made no mention of any Biden policies being responsible for the shift in balance from being a net exporter of petroleum in 2020 to a net importer in 2021 and 2022. Rather, the report in February simply said it is “largely because of declines in domestic crude oil production and corresponding increases in crude oil imports.”
The decline in domestic crude oil production came “as result of a…
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