U.S. fracking changes global balance of power; can’t CA join fun?
Anti-fracking forces are gearing up in California, aided by our pathetic state media, which never mention that the Obama administration considers hydraulic fracturing to access natural gas and oil reserves to be just another heavy industry that can be made safe with routine regulation.
But what’s depressing is that as the state’s anti-fracking movement grows more intense, fracking in the rest of the U.S. is changing the world balance of power — that’s not an exaggeration — while greatly enriching states wise enough to allow this game-changing energy-exploration technique. This piece from Business Mirror gets to how disruptive U.S. fracking has been:
“The US oil boom has put European refineries out of business and undercut West African crude suppliers. Now domestic drillers threaten to roil Asian markets and challenge producers in the Middle East and South America.
“Fifteen European refineries have closed in the past five years, with a 16th due to shut this year, the International Energy Agency said, as the US went from depending on fuel from Europe to being a major exporter to the region. Nigeria, which used to send the equivalent of a dozen supertankers of crude a month to the US, now ships fewer than three, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). And cheap oil from the Rocky Mountains, where output has grown 31 percent since 2011, will soon allow West Coast companies to cut back on imports of pricier grades from Saudi Arabia and Venezuela that they process for customers in Asia, the world’s fastest-growing market.
“’I don’t really think anyone saw this coming,’ said Steve Sawyer, an analyst with FACTS Global Energy in London. ‘The US shale boom happened much faster than people thought. We’re in the middle of a new game. There’s nothing in the past that predicts what the future will be.'”
Obama predicted shale boom in 2011
Business Mirror does a good job of flushing out my theme of Obama administration support for fracking by noting the president himself understood three years ago how transformative it would be:
“Advances in extracting oil from shale rock drove a 39-percent jump in US production since 2011, the steepest rise in history … . With US exports of gasoline and other refined products hitting a record last month and the country on pace to become the world’s largest oil producer by 2015, five years faster than the EIA’s earlier predictions, industry advocates such as Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska are calling for an end to 39-year-old restrictions on US crude exports.
“In a measure of just how quickly the oil market has changed, President Barack Obama unveiled in March 2011 a goal considered so outrageous that correspondent Christopher Mims wrote on the environmental news website Grist that it could be accomplished only by ‘an economic crash bigger than any ever seen in US history, or perhaps an alien race forcing all of us to take to our bicycles.’ Obama said that by 2025 the US would cut crude imports by one-third.
“It didn’t take 14 years. It took less than three.”
What’s happening is incredible. If only California could get in on the fun; remember, the Golden State has more oil shale reserves than the rest of the U.S. combined. We could be a Saudi Arabia where women were allowed to show their legs if only militant greens got out of the way.
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