imported oil

The energy situation is looking pretty grim for much of the world. But here in North America? We're sitting pretty. Thanks to a boom in natural gas production from shale, and oil production from Canada's tar sands, North America will become an energy exporter over the coming decades.

One of this country's biggest economic problems is a tsunami of misinformation. You can't have a rational debate when facts are so easily supplanted by overreaching statements and errors. Here are three misconceptions about our economy that need to be laid to rest.

Between cries of "Drill Baby, Drill" and the near-constant drone about our "reliance on foreign oil," you might think that the U.S. is in an energy crisis. But in fact, our reliance on imported oil has been declining since 2005, and trends in energy production and consumption look encouraging.

Bad economic news across the board is weighing on Americans' mood this month. The consumer sentiment index fell to a 5-month low in March, thanks to increases in the U.S. trade deficit, higher jobless claims, and a more than 40-cent jump in the price of a gallon of gas.

Events in the Mideast have, once again, revealed the U.S. economy's vulnerability to an oil shock. Now more than ever, the nation must reduce its consumption of oil, especially from abroad, and become energy self-sufficient. And the way to do it is with our abundant domestic sources of natural gas.

The U.S. trade gap widened to just under $500 billion in 2010, but that obscures impressive growth in global sales of U.S. goods. And the outlook for 2011 is even better. Still, to reach a trade surplus, America must solve two serious problems.

U.S. consumers in the last year or so have been whipsawed by the price of oil. Having seen crude oil prices surge to more than $147 a barrel in July 2008, prices tumbled steadily right into the new year, only to resume a steady climb on investor speculation that the world economy was heading out of...