Oil: US Imports, Production, North Dakota Production

North American oil production will increase from current 6 million bbls/day to 8 million bbls/day in five years:

• Utica: 0 --> 500K
• Bakken: 500K --> 900K
• Eagle Ford: 0 --> 1.2 million
• Permian increase: at 1.3 million (source did not say what it was now)
• Mississippi Lime: 0 --> 600K
• Wattenberg: --> 300K

According to the US DOE:

Crude oil imports fell to 8.9 million barrels a day in 2011, the lowest level in more than a decade. Since 2005, foreign imports have dropped from 60 percent of U.S. consumption to 45 percent last year.

Meanwhile, according to BloombergBusinessweek (same link):

While the U.S. is becoming less reliant on foreign crude, the world is becoming more reliant on gasoline and diesel fuel refined in the U.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 out such staples of U.S. manufacturing as Detroit’s autos and Boeing’s (BA) airplanes.

The US has two advantages:

U.S. refiners have two key competitive advantages over foreign rivals: cheaper natural gas and access to a cheap, abundant supply of oil. Natural gas is a key raw material for refineries, which use it predominantly as a source of fuel to operate. Since last summer, the price has fallen 50 percent in the U.S., while hydraulic fracturing methods have significantly increased the supply of natural gas in the U.S.

Price of WTI:

Meanwhile, U.S. refineries in the Midwest and Gulf Coast process crude that’s pegged to the price of West Texas Intermediate, which has stayed low, thanks to all the oil gushing out of North America. Since 2009, North Dakota has more than doubled its monthly oil production to 16 million barrels as of December 2011, surpassing the output of Ecuador late last year. That supply has kept WTI-priced oils cheap, while the cost of Brent-priced oils has skyrocketed.

Kewl.