[crunchlibrarian]

The United States is now a massive oil exporter, most of the news stories you read about pipelines or other new facilities involve getting this oil out of the country and selling it.

"Energy independence" is one of those buzzphrases from another era that doesn't really make sense anymore, insofar as it ever made sense. The idea that oil or electrical capacity is special and shouldn't be traded or should be traded differently than anything else because "security" is utter nonsense and has been used to justify lots of bad things.

If you actually wanted "energy independence" you'd stop allowing oil companies to export or otherwise nationalize the energy industry, which is probably not going to happen.