Energy independence remains low post-pandemic---renewable transition is the key.

As mentioned before, the United States, almost throughout its history, has imported more petroleum, including refined petroleum products, crude oil, and other liquids, than it has exported. In 2020, this situation changed. According to the Short-TermEnergy Outlook (STEO) of February 2021 provided by the U.S. Energy InformationAdministration (EIA), 2020 was the first year that the United States exported morepetroleum than it imported. However, EIA expects that, mainly due to declines in domestic crude oil production and subsequent increases in crude oil imports, the United States will return to being a net petroleum importer both for 2021 and 2022.

According to EIA’s reports, the growing crude oil imports will subsequently lead to the rise of the net petroleum imports and more than counterbalance the changes in the refined product net trade. Specifically, the Administration expects the augmentation of the net imports of crude oil from their 2020 average of 2.7 mmb/d to 3.7 mmb/d and 4.4 mmb/d in 2021 and 2022 respectively.

In comparison with crude oil trade, net exports of refined petroleum products did not change as much during 2020. EIA foresees that the net petroleum product exports will be accretive for 2021 and 2022 as global demand for petroleumproducts continues to grow. Moreover, EIA forecasts that the United States will have to import more crude oil in order to fill the widening gap between the domestic crude oil production and the refinery inputs of crude oil in 2021 and 2022. Specifically, the U.S. crude oil production declined by eight percent in 2020 because of well curtailment and a drop in the drilling activity which was related to low crude oil prices. To conclude with, U.S. is expected to import 62 percent more crude by 2022 due to domestic production declines, according to EIA (French and Macintyre, 2021).