Robert Hirsch (Bio notes - Robert L. Hirsch) says 4-6 trillion over 20 years. See http://www.energybulletin.net/19477.html for commets on his presentation. The comments say 1 trillion per year but looking at the slides for the presentation it apears to me that the 1 trillion is for the world, the 4-6 for 20yrs for just the US.
The US definitely needs to become energy-independent. That would help it out of so many bad situations (everything from Iraq to budget deficits), which would give it more flexibility and the chance to blow off relationships with dubious regimes and live up to its founding principles.
I think the US (and Canada, too, for that matter) should be pushing maximum efficiency of energy usage at the same time as looking at all these supply replacements (coal-to-liquids, new nukes, etc). Every reduction in need is another piece of demand you don’t need to figure out how to replace.
What would happen to the market price of crude oil, once the USA started reduing imports? is it possible that oil could drop back to say, $25/barrel? It seems to me that reduing US oil imports would solve a lot of problems, not the least one of depriving 3rd-world oligarchs of lots of cash. Iran would be in severe economic difficulties, if the market price for crude were to drop precipitously. 
I suspact that China and India would be more than happy to absorb any imports that the US passed up.
No, you’re correct, and you were correct overall - I was only taking exception to the absolute because, well, I nipick about coal.
The EIA numbers are close, but there is a bit of dispute over the import values, due to the way that what makes up an “import” is classified as well as errors in reporting. I have on my hard drive coal receipts that are about double what the EIA shows, for example. I expect this to grow steadily over the years - I’ve been to at least 20 and worked with maybe 50 coal units this last year on the East coast which are seriously considering buying large amounts of imported coal. One utility is in the final stages of entering a contract for 5M tons a year for just themselves (that’s a quarter billion $ a year heading offshore…).
Which still doesn’t change the overall point you were making that we can easily supply all our own coal should we have to.
You were quite correct to nit pick - I made an assumption and was rumbled. The extra insight you provided was appreciated, and goes to show, having a resource is one thing, having it in the right place to be able to economically make use of it is quite another.
cheers