Quick, What Are The Three Biggest Oil Producers In The World?

You are going to guess Saudi Arabia is one of them, that's easy.  But I will bet that many of you will guess Iraq, or Libya, or some other countries that have populations with turbans wound too tight.  According to this 2011 report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, number 2 is Russia, and number 3 is the United States:

Russia (10.24) Saudi Arabia (11.15) United States (10.15) 

Yes, the U.S. produced very slightly less than Russia and only slightly less than Saudi Arabia.  This March 5,. 2013 Investors Business Daily report says that EIA is now reporting that as of November 2012, the U.S. has now passed Saudi Arabia:

In spite of the Obama Administration's hostility to carbon-rich energy, private actors with private capital deployed on private (and state) land have launched a game-changing revolution in domestic oil and natural gas production.

A scarcely reported milestone conveys the magnitude of this turnaround in the global energy landscape.

The U.S. passed Saudi Arabia as the world's largest petroleum producer in November 2012, according to recently released data of the federal Energy Information Administration.

Over the last five years, domestic oil output has risen 40% and continually outpaces projections. Last year, domestic output increased by 800,000 barrels per day. This is the largest increase in annual production since the first oil well was drilled in 1859 in Pennsylvania.

The report is here.  We are indeed now number 1 in petroleum production.  U.S. imports of petroleum are now down to about where they were in the mid-1990s.  In spite of the best efforts of the Obama Administration, more than one-third of that importation is coming from Canada, a country that, for all its differences from the U.S., is most unlikely to unleash terrorist attacks on our cities.  (I'm trying to imagine homegrown Canadian terrorism: excessive use of "eh" in conversation, followed by attempts to feed us poutine?)