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Near the end of Sunday’s contentious and much-maligned presidential debate, Hillary Clinton made, arguably, the most revealing statement yet on the likely path of energy policy in her White House.

“We’ve got to remain energy independent,” Clinton said. “It gives us much more power and freedom than to be worried about what goes on in the Middle East. We have enough worries over there without having to worry about that.”

Now, the statement may appear almost innocuous at first blush.

Every US president since Richard Nixon has spoken on the importance of energy independence, a notion which gained new life both after the September 11, 2001, attacks and amid the US shale oil and gas renaissance.

And Clinton’s use of the energy independence political catchphrase was quickly pointed to as one of two factual errors she made in the debate.

“US production is up and the share of imports is down, but that’s not the same as being energy-independent,” wrote Politico, which claimed that this and a reference to Donald Trump not apologizing were Clinton’s two “falsehoods” of the debate. (Donald Trump, Politico wrote, had made 13 falsehoods and six misleading claims during the debate).

It’s certainly difficult to think of the US being energy independent when it continues to import millions of barrels of foreign, and OPEC-sourced, crude oil.

This year, for example, the US is on pace to import an average of 7.85 million b/d of crude oil, including more than 3.15 million b/d of crude from OPEC nations, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

US crude imports in July averaged nearly 8.1 million b/d, the most since August 2013, according to EIA. US imports of OPEC crude have fallen from the nearly 5.42 million b/d peak in 2008, but are on pace to average more than 3.15 million b/d this year, up from 2.67 million b/d in 2015.

Imports have risen as US crude production has declined, to 8.7 million b/d in July from 9.6 million b/d in April 2015. As a percentage of total crude inputs into US refineries, production reflects a drop to 51% from nearly 60% in April 2015.

But if you want to use this as an argument that the US is now less oil dependent you also have to ignore that US refiners have been increasingly exporting refined products, and producers are now able to expor...