We've got the power: a boom in oil and gas production and increased conservation are bringing the U.S. closer to a long-desired goal: energy independence.

• Author: Krauss, Clifford
• Position: NATIONAL

In the stretch of West Texas desert known as the Permian Basin, the roar of new oil rigs and the acrid fumes they produce are unmistakable signs that crude oil is gushing again.

And it's not just in Texas. Across the country, the oil and gas industry is vastly increasing production, reversing two decades of decline. Using new technology and spurred by rising oil prices, the industry is extracting millions of barrels more a week, from the deepest waters of the Gulf of Mexico to the prairies of North Dakota.

At the same time, Americans are pumping significantly less gasoline. While that's partly a result of the weak economy and higher gas prices, people are also driving fewer miles and replacing older cars with more fuel-efficient vehicles.

Taken together, increasing production and declining consumption have unexpectedly brought the United States closer to a goal that has tantalized presidents since Richard Nixon (1969-74): independence from foreign energy. It's a milestone that could transform American foreign policy, the economy, and more.

"There is no question that many national security policy makers will believe they have much more flexibility and will think about the world differently if the United States is importing a lot less oil," says Michael Levi, an energy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.

That's because a lot of the countries the U.S. depends on for oil--like Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela--are hostile to American interests and/or in volatile regions like the Middle East.

In the past three years, the U.S. has reduced oil imports from members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) by more than 20 percent (see Times Past, p. 16). And for the first time since the early 1950s, the U.S. has become a net exporter of refined petroleum products like gasoline. The natural gas industry, which less than a decade ago feared running out of domestic gas, is suddenly dealing with a glut.

In fact, U.S. oil production increased so sharply over the last five years that the International Energy Agency now predicts that U.S. output will surpass Saudi Arabia's by 2020. Already, North Dakota's production has overtaken that of Ecuador, the smallest producer of OPEC's 12 members. In 2011, the U.S. imported just 45 percent of its liquid fuel, down from a record high of 60 percent in 2005.

New Technologies

The boom has been made possible by two new drilling technologies that have allowed the extraction of oil...