Yea, "cheap gas"
People are increasingly driving larger lower MPG vehicles and not cars I guess partly because they perceive gas to be cheap. Really. I don't think it's ever been cheap to keep fuel in a motor vehicle ...
Forum Discussion
One major stumbling block to US oil independence is that most of the new well production from shale, etc, is light sweet crude instead of the medium/heavy crude that most US refineries were built to process. Light sweet is fine for gasoline production, but not so much for heating oil, diesel, and jet fuel. Many European and Asian refineries are better suited to using light sweet crude, so while the US is still importing oil, we are also exporting much more oil since the export ban was lifted in 2016. It will likely be years before our refinery capabilities can handle all of our own needs using our own crude, but we could easily move from a net importer to a net exporter much sooner as well production improves. US refineries are upgrading at considerable expense to handle the ultra-light oil from the shale fields, but it's a slow process.
