Amid claims by the Obama administration that we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil—and actual Republican and conservative efforts actually to do so by opening up access to our own gas and oil supplies, protect our coal producers, and their failed effort to facilitate American purchase of Canadian oil—we get this, from The New York Times, no less.

The United States is increasing its dependence on oil from Saudi Arabia, raising its imports from the kingdom by more than 20 percent this year, even as fears of military conflict in the tinderbox Persian Gulf region grow.

The increase in Saudi oil exports to the United States began slowly last summer and has picked up pace this year. Until then, the United States had decreased its dependence on foreign oil and from the Gulf in particular.

If the Obama administration weren’t slow-walking permits for off-shore drilling, closing off Federal lands to oil and gas development, and attacking natural gas fracking, we’d be getting access to increased American oil—and a major product substitute, gas—right about now, instead of having to buy more oil from Saudi Arabia, and thereby enriching a nation that has closed off Israeli access to its airspace should our erstwhile ally want to preempt an Iranian nuclear strike by attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities.

If the Obama administration hadn’t closed off American access to Canadian oil by killing the Keystone XL pipeline, and thereby pushed Canada to sell its oil to the People’s Republic of China (which has its own purposes for getting Canadian oil), we’d have reduced further our dependence on oil from countries that don’t like us all that much.