John Stumpf, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
Well, as I mentioned in my comments, Joe, since the United States is a net consumer, net importer of oil, we think it’s a positive for the US economy, clearly. That is on average – because there’s going to be some states that are impacted, some customers who are going to be impacted and some businesses are going to be impacted. But we serve 70 million customers and virtually all of them know how to fill a gas tank and go to a gas pump. And that’s a real benefit. So we think net-net – it’s an opportunity. Surely there are offsets, like we said. But even within the oil and gas business, and John mentioned, we are a participant there, it’s about 2% of our loans. There is still a lot of opportunity for consolidation there and we’ll participate in that with our customers. We are looking at our portfolio. We analyze that. We have been through that over the past, but net-net we think it’s a positive.
Joe Morford, RBC Capital Markets.
Okay, great. I guess, somewhat related to that, you know, it seems recently the expectations now that higher rates are getting pushed out, it could be lower for longer, which theoretically could weigh on margins. Do you expect to be able to offset that with better growth in the business amidst a stronger economy as you talked about? Or, you know, do you see any need to take a harder look at expenses and what other levers might you have to pull there?
John Shrewsberry, Chief Financial Officer
We are always taking a hard look at expenses. So, there’s nothing incremental that we would plan on doing there, but continuing to be as vigilant as we have. We have been operating at a pretty strong level – in a zero interest rate environment – for a very long time, and, well, because of the way our balance sheet is positioned, it would probably be – there is upside when short term rates move, and if that happens later, then that upside might be realized later. We are continuing to position ourselves to compete and to perform in this interest rate environment. So, loan growth, deposit growth, re deploying excess liquidity into earning assets, as I said, being vigilant on expenses, all of those things contribute to the performance that we have had and that we are anticipating continuing to have, until the time that rates begin to move.
Joe Morford, RBC Capital Markets.
Okay. Thanks so much for the thoughts.
Operator
The next question will come from the line of John McDonald with Sanford Bernstein. Please go ahead.
John McDonald, Sanford Bernstein
Hi, Good Morning. I was wondering, John – just a question on credit and provision, asset quality clearly remains excellent and I was not sure if you mentioned future reserve releases, John, but with such strong loan growth and credit matrix now looking stable, should we expect the reserve releases to taper off and might you need to start adding to reserves at some point if loan growth continues at this kind of pace?
John Shrewsberry, Chief Financial Officer
I think the short answer is yes. If we have robust loan growth going forward, all things being equal even that would contribute to the need for some amount of incremental provisioning. So it’s going to be a function of the amount of loan growth, the mix of loan growth, the quality of the portfolio overall and general economic conditions. One thing I would like to add to Joe’s first question also: there is no specific provisioning action in the 4th Quarter for what’s going on in the energy world. There’s nothing anticipated, nothing necessary at the moment, but – there is nothing in that quarter.
John McDonald, Sanford Bernstein
Okay. Did you make a comment about reserve releases? John, in the past couple quarters you’ve said reserve releases could continue. I was wondering if that changed a little bit now with credit bottoming – if I missed it or not.
John Shrewsberry, Chief Financial Officer
You know, with the size of the portfolio, the size of the allowance, and the amount of the 4th Quarter’s release, the $250 million, it’s close to call. We have said in the recent past to expect them to taper now for the reasons that you mentioned, and I described, there could be future releases. There could be future net provisioning. So we are at that point in the cycle, I think.
