Energy issues affect, and are affected by, all three. We believe that market forces should determine the prices of goods and services, including oil and other forms of energy. We want to work cooperatively with other governments and with the private sector throughout the hemisphere to foster healthy markets, to encourage investment and innovation, and to promote the welfare of all our people. These general objectives are widely shared in this hemisphere, and I believe we've built a good record on them. The Western Hemisphere's energy trading relationship is the largest and most integrated in the world.
Oil is, of course, now the leading aspect of that relationship.
But I also want to touch on the role of gas as a catalyst for deepening hemispheric integration. Despite dramatic gains in energy efficiency over the last few decades, and the fact that oil's role in our economy is roughly half what it was in the 1970s, the United States remains the largest oil consumer. We now import more than half of our daily oil needs. Our hemispheric suppliers have demonstrated, time and again, that they understand our mutual energy interdependence. Hemispheric oil suppliers did not, for example, participate in the oil boycotts against the United States in the 1970s, and moved quickly to bring on new production in times of crisis, such as the Gulf War.