Trump sets United States on course towards energy independence

President Donald Trump promised to achieve energy independence during the campaign, but the hazy definition of independence and the long timeline of energy policies make it a hard promise to keep.

"Under my presidency, we will accomplish a complete American energy independence. Complete. Complete," Trump said in a speech in May 2016, during the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference in Bismarck, N.D.

"Imagine a world in which our foes and the oil cartels can no longer use energy as a weapon," Trump continued. "Wouldn't that be nice?"

Almost a year into his administration, we decided to check in. How close are we to achieving energy independence?

The White House did not define energy independence when we asked. So we'll go with the generally agreed upon definition: producing as much energy as is consumed domestically.

That's not the case just yet.

In the first eight months of 2017, the United States produced 57.8 quadrillion BTUs of energy and used 64.9 quadrillion BTUs, according to the Energy Information Administration, an office of the federal government. The United States imported 11.3 quadrillion BTUs more of energy than it exported in 2016.

Oil is mostly responsible for the imbalance, as the United States already produces as much as it consumes in coal, natural gas and electricity generation.

Experts predict the United States will become a net exporter of oil in the next five to 10 years. That could be expedited with high oil prices -- or pushed to after 2040 with low ones, according to the EIA.

The steadily shrinking gap can be traced back to the boom in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in the late 2000s.

Which brings us to the most significant point: Price, alongside market signals and technology, are the principal drivers toward energy independence, not the government.

Trump has touted notable regulatory rollbacks for the energy industry. Those include:

• Auctioning off 77 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling in March;

• Directing the Environmental Protection Agency to rescind the Clean Power Plan;

• Ordering the Treasury Department to "eliminate barriers to the financing of highly efficient overseas coal energy plants"; and,

• Approving the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines.

What isn't clear is whether those steps will have much of an effect on Trump's promise. Certainly not one that is visible yet -- and won't be for at least five to 10 years, experts told us.

"What happens in the first year is completely irrelevant of what the president has done because when you talk about energy, you talk about multi-decadal pathways," said Ken Medlock, senior director of the Center for Energy Studies at Rice University.

Opening up areas for oil and gas exploration and development, for example, requires a multi-year planning process, lease sales, and most importantly, large investments by companies. In order to drill, companies must find these expensive ventures more profitable than existing opportunities, like onshore horizontal drilling and fracking.

The Keystone XL pipeline, on the other hand, has not yet been built, and with alternative albeit less efficient transport options, experts pointed out that it wouldn't necessarily impact whether the energy resources are developed.

"At the heart of it, the Trump administration's regulatory fixes will make it somewhat easier in the long run to produce oil and natural gas," said Emma Ashford, a research fellow at the Cato Institute. "But in reality, we're already living in a supply glut, so there's not much of an incentive for increased production, particularly in hard to drill areas."

Even if the United States were to balance exports and imports, it is a long ways away from total disengagement from the global market (or zero imports), which most experts defined as true energy independence. That, experts said, is neither viable nor desirable.

"There are political and foreign policy reasons the U.S. presence conveys value," Medlock said. "That's not going to change."

"The rhetoric and the language surrounding the notion of energy independence suggests that it is desirable to disconnect from the global economy and become self-sufficient," said Richard Newell, president of Resources for the Future and former EIA administrator under President Barack Obama. "But it is not in the United States' interest to produce exactly all the energy we consume."

The United States has comparative advantages in producing certain energy sources, like light oil, while other countries are better at producing other sources, like heavy crudes, which means that staying integrated in the global trading scheme lowers prices for American consumers at the pumps -- and creates business for American oil refiners.

Whether turning the United States into a net energy exporter or cutting off imports completely, the government takes a back seat to market forces. And it will likely take years before the export-import balance sees the subtle fruit of Trump's labor. But that doesn't take away from his considerable efforts to facilitate fossil fuel extraction, production and exports.

We rate this promise In the Works.