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Since the discovery of oil well drilling, energy policy (particularly offshore petroleum policy over the past three decades) has led the United States, and indeed the industrialized world, into a cycle of dependency, profit, and risk taking that made a Macondo-like blowout likely, if not inevitable. This article examines the broad political, economic, technological, and environmental contexts surrounding the growth and development of both our ability to obtain petroleum and our dependency on it. The authors use the tools of environmental sociology, environmental history, and political ecology to trace the path to the current situation in which the myth of “energy independence” is used to justify practices that are counter to the very concept. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]