Good news! The U.S. is at its highest in oil production since 1997. American Enterprise Institute’s Mark Perry writes:

U.S. crude oil production surged last week to the highest level in more than 15 years, reaching output of 6.5 million barrels per day for the week ending September 21 according to new data from the Department of Energy.

See the chart below:

Bloomberg reports that you can thank technological innovation:

A combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has helped reduce America’s reliance on foreign oil. The same technology unleashed a boom in natural gas output from shale that pushed inventories to a record last year.

“This has been driven by shale, and the two states leading the way are North Dakota and Texas,” said Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates LLC, an energy consulting firm in Houston. “It appears that over the next five years, U.S. oil production could climb to well over 8 million barrels a day.” 

Who you can’t thank is the federal government. While it went up from 2010-2011 on state and private lands, oil production fell by 11% on federal lands.

Much of this is due to barriers to development in the Gulf of Mexico.

The administration loves talking about an “All-of-the-Above” approach to energy, but they continue pushing policies that prevent us from tapping into all of our resources.