The United States established its Strategic Petroleum Reserve SPR in the wake of the 1973–1974 oil embargo that disrupted oil imports and drove oil prices much higher. The SPR consists primarily of several large underground salt caverns for storage located along the Gulf Coast in Texas and Louisiana. These sites were chosen based on their geologic stability and ability to safely store hundreds of millions of barrels of crude oil.
There is an element of truth to this argument, in that net U.S. imports have fallen. However, that argument requires context. The U.S. exports a lot of oil, because the oil we produce isn’t a great economic fit for U.S. refiners. Therefore, we export a lot of the oil we produce domestically, and we import a lot of cheaper foreign oil. Thus, the loss of oil imports would cause some disruptions, even though our net petroleum imports have fallen sharply in recent years.