Although the United States is producing record amounts of oil and natural gas, helping to insulate energy consumers from unstable price swings, pipeline constraints continue to hamper our ability to become energy independent and lower energy prices for our families and small businesses.
And pipeline constraints help explain why we still import a ton of oil and gas, with too many areas not having access to our own domestic production surge. For example, we still imported an overly high average of 7.9 million b/d of crude oil in 2018, despite recently reaching a mind-blowing record of 12 million b/d of crude production. This worsens our trade deficit, hampers our goal for energy self-sufficiency, disrupts local communities thriving on shale development, and dangerously benefits riskier international suppliers.
For oil in particular, more pipelines give us an expanding ability to lower prices not just here but around the world, a critical component to growing the global economy that we must help to realize.
Read more – Forbes
