America's Dependence on Foreign Oil

America depends way too much on foreign countries for our oil. If we would just use our own natural gas we would save so much money. Counting on other countries hurts us individually and as a country. As gas prices soar, so does the prices of the other things we use everyday. High oil prices not only hurts us at the pump, but in our everyday life as well.

America spends more than $200,000 per minute on foreign oil, $13 million per hour, and our country alone goes through 15 million barrels of oil per day. And yet the demand keeps growing. If our country keeps up with this, we will depend more and more on these foreign countries and less on our own country, basically letting the other countries control us.

Our country only has 3% of the world's oil reserves, so we can't completely rely on our country to produce all its own oil. That doesn't mean that we can't cut down on imports and use more of our own. We can make more fuel alternatves, like ethanol, and produce them in our own country.

America gets a majority of our oil from OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries), which involves Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Libya, Algeria, Nigeria, Angola, Venezuela and Ecuador. Basically, we let these other countries control us. We depend on them for our oil, and if they want to raise the price of oil, we have no choice but to agree.

To fix our oil addiction problem, I think we should make more efficient vehicles. Yes, we already have hybrid cars, but more people should be using them. We can also cut down on oil usage by using alternate forms of energy. Oil is used for many other things than just cars. We should focus on cutting out imports and using more oil drilled on our own shores.