If we are short of oil and gas, why are our oil companies exporting crude and gas to Canada and Mexico?

Why should we drill more oil wells when our oul companies are exporting millions of gallons of crude and gas daily to Mexico and Canada. If we drill more, won't they just export more? If we are short of oil and gas, why are our oil companies exporting crude and gas to Canada and Mexico?
The US is not a net exporter of oil to Canada or Mexico. The US is a massive net importer of oil from those countries (i.e. any oil that gets exported to those countries is more than compensated for by imports).





It is a fiction that developing oil in the US will affect US oil prices more than developing oil in Russia or Saudi Arabia or wherever will, simply because oil is freely traded between countries and comes at a single price worldwide. So long as you're importing any oil at all, you have to pay the market price for it, and there simply isn't enough oil on US soil to supply all of US demand without importing some. If we are short of oil and gas, why are our oil companies exporting crude and gas to Canada and Mexico?
Because it's a free market and these are private companies. Now, if we had a nationalized energy system like Venezuela and Mexico have, we'd have plenty of oil and gas at a MUCH cheaper price.
We get most of our oil from Mexico and Canada.








I'll get the chart in a minute.





http://www.eia.doe.gov/bookshelf/brochur鈥?/a>
If you only look at what they're selling overseas, you're not getting the whole picture.





We use 20 billion barrells per day, we produce less than half of that.





Somehow, we have to be buying more than we're selling. A lot more.
I think you have that backwards. America imports about 23% of it;s crude from CAnada and Mexico.