If we ARE, then 'the last time we were producing around this much' was probably like 1976 or something, when our population was considerably smaller.

IOW even if the physical amount is at or near the peak of 'how much we're ever produced' (I'm dubious on that), we're still nowhere near our "historical maximum in terms of % of what we use that's produced domestically". It used to be WAY over 100% ... the US was pretty much a Saudi Arabia from like 1930 to 1970.

Also ttbomk the ban on export of our crude remains in place and if not it was only recently lifted, don't think Obama lifted it.

The % domestically produced has gone up a bit over the past 10 or so years due to fracking and other new-ish tech (and slightly reduced demand), but US still only produce some 55-60% (haven't checked real recently) of the crude that we use every day, so by that reason alone we're subject to the vagaries of the global market prices.

We are producing more than we consume.

There's a lot of factors in that. Renewable increases, consumption reductions due to conservation, shale oil production and, most especially, natural gas production.

Believe we still import around 40% of what we burn through every day. And I don't mean that's like 'a trade' where we also sell that amount or more on the world market. I mean NET production vs. consumption. Talking like 'domestically we consume/burn through 20M barrels of crude a day but we only pull 13M barrels per day from the ground', or whatever the number is.

Probably if you counted total BTU's of things like coal and renewables and nukes and hydro and natural gas you could account for that which is contained within the 40% of petroleum we import, making us net energy producer, sure ... that wouldn't surprise me ... but the fact remains we still import lots to turn into gasoline and other petroleum products for US consumption.

Which is to say we've always been vulnerable to rising oil costs due to a weak dollar, based on that 40% alone ... and I just checked and it turns out that yes ... the ban was lifted ... looks like it was under Obama but I think the GOPee did it in Congress.

http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/29/investing/us-oil-exports-begin/index.html

So yeah, your friend is right ... since we've opened our crude for sale on the global market as well, that vulnerability to weak dollar is (logically at least somewhat) further exacerbated by that action.

Our union negotiated a 2% COLA, but most of that will be eaten up as well.