The premise of U.S. energy independence has been debated for years by politicians, economists, oil and gas executives and the public. Is it possible? Has it already been achieved, courtesy of the shale revolution?

Or, should we instead focus on achieving a state of energy self-sufficiency, which would seem to acknowledge the might of U.S. supply potential and optionality without assuming isolation from the global energy marketplace?

U.S. and North American energy independence in all its iterations was the topic at the fifth annual Energy Moving Forward conference, presented in June by the Global Energy Management Program at the University of Colorado Business School in Denver. Opening keynote speaker, author and journalist Robert Bryce made no bones about his stance, asking, “Why would the U.S.—the second-largest energy producer and consumer in the world, want to be independent? It’s [energy] a $5 trillion per year business globally.”

Bryce blamed the obsession with energy independence on “delusions” held by the public that have been promulgated by various stakeholders and competing interests.

Among these misconceptions, he cited the notion that independence would be positive for consumers; that it would isolate the U.S. from global oil markets and, therefore, from price volatility; that we could “abandon” our involvement in the Middle East region if we had all the oil supplies we needed; and that buying oil on the world market funds terrorism.

He poked holes in each of these convictions, citing the corn ethanol program as a rip-off of consumers in the name of energy independence.

Further, if the U.S. doesn’t buy foreign oil, the Saudis will simply to sell it to someone else—and someone potentially hostile to U.S. interests at that, he said. He argued against the perception of an oil-terrorism link that was forged in the public’s mind in the wake of 9/11.

And, finally, he said isolation from the global oil market is an impossible dream, as it is “the single-biggest and most transparent market in the history of the world.”

While the U.S. has reduced oil imports, in 2014 it still shipped 4.2 million barrels per day more than the year previous in refined products to numerous countries. With the coming of LNG exports, the U.S. will become a major player in that world market. And U.S. coal continues to feed a rapidly expanding global market.

“We are increasingly interdependent in everything,” he said.

The closing keynote speaker at the event, Ram Shenoy, ConocoPhillips chief technology officer, cast the argument for lifting the oil export ban as a step toward “security of supply.”

He said exporting crude would lower costs for consumers at the pump, boost the U.S. economy and employment, further reduce the oil import bill and lift government revenues.

Technology advances mean that we have a long way to go before we exhaust our hydrocarbon potential. He said the shale revolution was a 1-trillion-barrel-of-oil-equivalent event that is still in its infancy in terms of ultimate potential, as the technology that made it possible continues to evolve. “We are only a decade into what is possibly a half-century trend,” he said.

“Although we’ve had great success in extracting oil and gas and achieving great growth in production, when you think about how these fields will be 20, 30, 40 years from now, there are fundamental question about the life of the fields and what the total recoveries will be,” he said.

“When we began working on Ecofisk Field [in the Norwegian North Sea] in the 1970s, we thought it would have a life of 20 years and be done. But we’re producing it today, 40 years later, because of improvements in our understanding, and it is likely to go for another 30 years from what we know today. There is no discounting what technology and innovation will do.”

The oil and gas industry’s deepwater experience confirms this view. Shenoy noted the steady progression of discoveries in the Gulf of Mexico, and the way in which every five years, operators return with improved seismic and other technologies to take another look. And every five years they explore for and find more oil and gas, he said.

ConocoPhillips is a strong supporter of lifting the ban on crude oil exports. “From an overall potential economic impact standpoint, from a security of energy supply viewpoint, global markets are better served with stable supply put into the global supply,” he said.