The United States consumes 21 million barrels of oil per day, and is far and away the world's highest consumer of oil. In terms of world oil production, the United States has the 11th most proven reserves in the world at 21.4 billion barrels but this is only enough to account for 2.2% of the world's total proven oil reserves.

These are the numbers that are used to show America's dependence on foreign oil. While 69% of the United States' oil consumption in 1970 came from domestic wells, only 25% of the United States' oil consumption came from domestic resources in 2005. The United States' gas demand relies heavily on imports, and organizations like OPEC supply us with around 55% of all our petroleum imports.

These numbers are not to say that the United States is dry when it comes to petroleum reserves. Four domestic areas account for over 70% of total proven reserves: Texas has 23%, Alaska has 18%, California has 16% and the Gulf of Mexico has 17% of the nations proven reserves, which, as of December 31, 2006 was reported to be 20,972 million barrels. This reserve amount, however, is actually a 4 percent decrease from 2005. Specifically, the Gulf of Mexico Federal Offshore and Alaska, which are the nation's two largest suppliers of domestic oil, reported 10 and 7 percent declines respectively in crude oil reserves.

The United States' refining capacity is at about 16 million barrels per day, which is actually a smaller rate when compared to America's refining rate in the 1980s when several simple distillation refineries were shut down. The nations leading region in refining capacity is the Gulf of Mexico, followed by the Midwest region and the West Coast. The East Coast and the Rockies account for a small percentage of the remaining refining.

But with efficient refining capacity, the demand for oil is outpacing the supply. The amount of reserve growth in the United States has not kept par with the amount of oil that was extract from existing reserves . In 2006, the replacement rate was around 50%, while in 2005 the replacement rate was at 122%. In 2006, the United States produced approximately 1,652 million barrels of crude oil, which was a 5% decrease from 2005.

The largest onshore oil field in the United States is the Prudhoe Bay Field in Alaska, which has over 1,000 producing wells and an area of over 210,000 acres with a production of around 475,000 barrels per day. The largest oil production field area in the United States is the Gulf of Mexico Federal Offshore field, which accounts for 25% of the national total which amounts to about 405 million barrels of production.

The United States also has around 5,174 million barrels of proved reserves that are not currently producing. These figures reported a 9% decrease from 2005.

Growth

The lessen our dependence on imported oil, the United States government has mobilized exploration crews around the country to find new crude reserves. In January 2008, 6 seismic crews explored the rocky mountains, 26 seismic crews explored through the mid-continent , 9 seismic crews explored in the southwest , 10 crews in Gulf Coast, and an additional 15 crews explored for offshore reserves while 10 other crews explored other areas to comprise a total of 76 crews that were searching for answers to America's energy problem.

Several states actually reported production increases in 2006. Montana's petroleum production grew by 6 million barrels, a 20 percent increase from 2005. A substantial portion of this increase came from the Bakken Formation in the Elm Coulee Field

Utah also reported a 78 million barrel increase of proved oil reserves in 2006, which contributed to the states production increase of 13 percent to finish around 15 to 17 million barrels in 2006. The major discovery in Utah was the Greater Aneth Field in southeast Utah, which was purchased by ExxonMobil. The Greater Aneth Field includes 359 active producing wells and 289 active carbon dioxide injection wells.

Another state that increased its proven oil reserves is Colorado, which saw reserve increases of 24 million barrels in 2006. The state's production, however, actually decreased from 19 million barrels in 2005 to 18 million barrels in 2006. Colorado's major field is the Wattenberg Field, which is the 8th largest gas field in the US in terms of proven reserves. The Wattenberg Field was also the 16th largest producer of oil in the United States.

Decline

Significant portions of the United States' proven reserves also saw declines in 2006. Alaska saw a 7% decline in proven reserves with production of 242 million barrels of oil in 2006, which was a 22% decrease from 2005's 312 million barrels. Oklahoma also saw a 10 % decline in crude oil reserves and a 4% production decrease from 2005. Other major suppliers Texas and California saw proven reserves decrease by 1% in each state. For Texas, this indicates a 48 million barrel decrease and a 46 million barrel decrease for California.

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