“Why does the US import so much oil when they are the world’s largest exporter of it?”

Question

I keep hearing over and over that the US imports all of its gasoline and raw petroleum that it used, however when you look at the numbers its the greatest exporter of oil ever. Wouldn’t it make more sense for the US to just take some that they produce and keep it to sell to its own consumers.

In: Economics

Answer 1

Oil is not all the same. Our refineries are all set up to use a particular type of oil, and we ran out of that type of oil in this country decades ago. The oil we’re extracting now is different and requires different processes to refine it. It would take investments in the billions or maybe even trillions of dollars to revamp our refineries to use it. So we export it to countries that already have refineries that can use it and import oil that we can use with our existing refineries.