I recently heard on TV that the US would not have to import oil if the gasoline mileage of our cars was as good as that of Europe. That seems doubtful to me, though I don't know what the average mileage is for the fleets of autos in the two regions. The US currently consumes about 385 million gallons of gas per day. That is equivalent to 19.5 million barrels of oil per day. The US uses 22 million barrels of oil per day. Total domestic production of oil and natural gas condensate is 8 million barrels per day (and is falling rapidly). The remaining 14 million barrels per day is imported. To eliminate oil importation the amount of oil used for gasoline production would have to be reduced from 19.5 million barrels per day to 5.5 million barrels per day. To do that without reducing miles driven, average mileage would have to be increased by a factor of 3.5. Assuming the US fleet now gets 15 mpg, that average mileage would have to be increased to over 50 mpg. I seriously doubt that the European fleet averages 50 mpg. This analysis is optimistic because out of every 42 gallon barrel of oil, 19.5 gallons of gasoline are produced. Much of the other 22.5 gallons are used for other products and it is doubtful that the economy could tolerate elimination of those products. Ethanol production could help some. It is currently running at around 16 million gallons per day, but would have to be much larger to eliminate oil importation, even with better mileage. (And ethanol mileage is only about 66% of that of gasoline.)