There have been reports that the United States right now is energy independent with the president Donald Trump mentioning this on the 8th of January when he had announced the new sanctions which were going to be put in place on Iran and this it is also true that the new technology has been making United States as the largest oil producer in the world. The exports of oil in the United States had also been exceeding the imports
However, the United States is still dependent on the oil from sources abroad. And the consumers in United States had been vulnerable to hike in prices which may occur as a result of the hostilities which may happen in the Middle East region or the disruptions of supply.
Experts feel that in the real world, the energy independence had been non-existent. They have huge amounts of imports still.
Most of the oil which comes from the United States is coming from the five states North Dakota, Texas, Alaska, Oklahoma and New Mexico. Once the oil is extracted it then goes to the refineries and then it goes to the end users. However, the products of oil are not flowing freely around the country like the cars on a highway. There is instead a huge level of regional limitation which exists on the capacity of the pipelines and the transport in other forms.
And the different oil product grades are suitable only for a few specific areas which require the highly specialized chains of supply. At times they are usually much cheaper to get from Rotterdam to the eastern coast rather than pushing it from Texas as per the experts.