The National Petroleum Council (NPC) issued a report to Energy Secretary Steven Chu on September 14 stating that oil fields in the United States could one day produce as much crude oil as Venezuela.

The report advised that the country's shale oil could potentially produce 2 to 3 million barrels per day by the year 2035, if the right technology breakthroughs occurred and regulation did not interfere, according to Reuters. Under the best circumstances, the combined daily production for the United States and Canada would total 22.5 million barrels per day, Fuelfix.com reports. This amount of production would probably not eliminate the country's dependence on foreign oil, as the United States currently consumes the same amount, according to the media outlet.

Andrew Slaughter, a Shell official who took lead on the council's study of resources, told reporters that "the potential is very significant, and if choices are made to develop those resources, that decline that we've seen over the last 10 to 15 years could actually turn up, and turn into growth," Reuters reports.

The NPC is a collection of government, industry and academic officials who meet several times a year to do conduct research and issue reports for the Secretary of Energy.