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(An earlier version of this story misstated North Dakota s monthlyoil production as 1.6 million barrels.) You hear all the time that America is too dependent on foreign oil.For the better part of the past 50 years, the U.S. has imported themajority of its crude. But that dependance is quicklydiminishing. According to the Energy Information Administration,crude oil imports fell to 8.9 million barrels a day in 2011, thelowest level in more than a decade. Since 2005, foreign importshave dropped from 60 percent of U.S. consumption to 45 percent lastyear, according to U.S. Department of Energy data . In December 2011, for example, the U.S. imported 1.3 million barrels a day from Saudi Arabia, compared with 1.6 million in December 2007. Thedecline in imports from Venezuela has been even steeper just 860,000 barrels per day compared with1.3 million four years earlier, although Venezuela s declining production capacity has also been a factor in the drop. While the U.S. is becoming less reliant on foreign crude, the worldis becoming more reliant on gasoline and diesel fuel refined in theU.S. This week, we learned that in 2011, the U.S. became a net exporter of gasoline, diesel and other fuels for the first time since 1949.Such refined products were the top U.S. export in 2011, beating outsuch staples of U.S. manufacturing as Detroit s autos and Boeing s ( BA ) airplanes. We have become the China of refined products, says Fadel Gheit,a senior energy analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. We re dumpingproduct into other countries backyards. Just as Chinese manufacturers are able to make many products for acheaper price due to lower material and labor costs, U.S. refinershave two key competitive advantages over foreign rivals: cheapernatural gas and access to a cheap, abundant supply of oil. Naturalgas is a key raw material for refineries, which use itpredominantly as a source of fuel to operate. Since last summer,the price has fallen 50 percent in the U.S., while hydraulicfracturing methods have significantly increased the supply ofnatural gas in the U.S. More importantly, the price of the crude oil that most U.S.refineries process has been trading at a steep discount to theinternational supplies of crude that foreign refineries have touse. Most foreign refineries buy oil that s pegged to the price ofBrent crude, which has risen more than 25 percent in the past yeardue to the uprisings in Libya and Egypt and recent concern overIranian oil disruption. Meanwhile, U.S. refineries in theMidwest and Gulf Coast process crude that s pegged to the price ofWest Texas Intermediate, which has stayed low, thanks to all theoil gushing out of North America. Since 2009, North Dakota has morethan doubled its monthly oil production to 16 million barrels as ofDecember 2011, surpassing the output of Ecuador late last year. That supply has keptWTI-priced oils cheap, while the cost of Brent-priced oils hasskyrocketed. This cheaper supply of crude has given U.S. refineries atremendous competitive advantage over their competition, Gheitsays. Just like China, we are using cheaper raw materials to sella product priced in a global market. Although a number of unprofitable refineries on the East Coast have had to close because they lacked access to cheaper WTI-priced oil, those in theMidwest and Gulf Coast are expanding. Even though a new refineryhasn t been built in the U.S. since the 1970s,refining capacity in the U.S. has been steadily increasing,climbing 0.8 percent, to 17.7 million barrels a day in Decemberfrom a year earlier. Marathon Petroleum has finished a $3.9billion expansion of its refinery in Garyville, La., and Total ( TOT ) completed a $2.2 billion expansion of its refinery in Port Arthur,Tex., which can now process a wider range of crude. In 2011, theGaryville refinery more than doubled the amount of diesel productsit exports, to 27.6 million barrels, says Marathon Petroleumspokesman Shane Pochard. Refineries should continue to export more of their product ratherthan sell it inside the U.S., where demand remains close to a15-year low thanks to more fuel-efficient cars and a greater shareof ethanol in our tanks. This points to a future where anincreasing share of the world s refined fossil fuels come with asticker: Made in the U.S.A. We are high quality suppliers, our products such as Promotional Keychains , China Retail Sign Holders for oversee buyer. To know more, please visits ID Card Holder Lanyard.
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