There are plenty of good reasons for the optimism. With the development of its massive shale deposits, the United States has become the world's single largest producer of natural gas. We're so awash in it that domestic prices have plummeted to historic lows. Advances in drilling technology have also made it possible to access hard-to-tap "tight" oil reserves in states such as North Dakota. Analysts believe those fresh crude sources could yield 2.9 million barrels of oil a day by 2020, up from 900,000 today. Meanwhile, cars are getting more efficient, and fuel use has dropped after soaring during the last decade, which frees up more energy production for export. According to Bloomberg, the U.S. is already getting 81% of its energy from domestic sources, the largest share since 1992, and up 10 percentage points since 2005.

Then, there's Canada, which now claims the world's third largest oil reserves thanks to Alberta's petroleum rich tar sands. That's important because Canada and the U.S. are family when it comes to global trade. They're currently our single largest oil supplier. We sell them 75% of their imports and buy 75% of their exports. The National Petroleum Council, which advises the White House on energy issues, believes that by 2035, the two countries combined could more than double their oil production to 22.5 million barrels a day, enough to satisfy their current total consumption.

If you're not too concerned about how much carbon gets pumped into the atmosphere over the next few decades, these are all great developments. (If you do care about global warming, these are all reasons to have a stiff drink, and perhaps consider moving far from the coasts). But even if we're approaching energy independence, the chances of ever actually getting there are rather slim, especially if our economy is still running on oil in 20 years.

MANAGE YOUR EXPECTATIONS



It may theoretically be possible for the U.S. and Canada to more than double our oil output, as the NPC suggests. To put that in perspective, we'd be adding the rough equivalent of another Saudi Arabia to the world oil market. To do it, the countries would have to pretty much tap every resource they have, both onshore and off. Obviously, the old "drill baby drill" crowd would love that approach. But it's' still controversial in coastal swing states like Florida. Beyond that, accessing some of the resources would require technology we don't have yet.

In the most likely scenarios, North American oil production will get a big boost in the coming years. It just won't be enough for us to start waving goodbye to OPEC. The U.S. Energy Information Administration forecasts that the American oil production will reach 6.7 million barrels a day by 2020, up from 5.5 million in 2010, then drop back to 6.1 million by 2035. Canada's National Energy Board foresees future production doubling to 6.0 million barrels per day by that year. So we'd end up with about 12.1 million barrels a day, around two-thirds* of what the United States currently chugs through on its own.