OIL IMPORTS, DOMESTIC PRODUCTION AND CAFE STANDARDS

A commenter on a thread made a claim about U.S. oil imports that set me off to find the real number. Here's the graph of imported crude oil from DOE:


The left axis is thousands of barrels per day.

I noticed that there was a marked decline for the years 1979-1985 and I wonder if that was due to increased domestic production. It wasn't. Domestic production was pretty much flat over these years. Data from DOE:

What did change was the average miles per gallon passenger cars were mandated to get. Data from NHSTA:



After 1986, the standard inched back to 27.5 mpg and has remained there.