HOUSTON — Falling gasoline prices have sent oil company stocks tumbling, but oil experts say the boom in American energy production shows no signs of slowing down, keeping the market flush with crude and gasoline prices low.

Even after a drop of as much as 25 percent in oil prices since early summer, several government and private reports say that it would take a drop of $10 to $20 a barrel more — to as low as $60 a barrel — to slow production even modestly. …

The Energy Department this week reported that only 4 percent of shale production in North Dakota, Texas and other states needed an oil price above $80 a barrel for producers to break even on investments. One reason is that improved efficiencies in hydraulic fracturing and other modern production techniques have increased the output of each new well month after month in recent years.

Did you note the matter-of-fact, hysteria-free way the NYT refers to fracking? Quite pleasant compared with California’s newspapers, where all enviro reporters with one exception never even mention that the Obama administration considers it safe. Or that the environmental movement basically didn’t say squat about hydraulic fracturing — using underground water cannons to blast away rock and access oil and natural gas reserves — for the first 60 years it was used.

Only when fracking became far more efficient (and cleaner) in the past six or seven years has it emerged as something greens love to hate — and even then the greenest president in history won’t buy in.

Fracking: Sit back and enjoy the CA freakout

So as the U.S. oil boom continues, California residents who like good news and who don’t like the quasi-religious extremism of many environmentalists will have to listen to evidence-free wailing from people who benefit enormously from fracking. They’ll shout themselves hoarse about its evils and pursue local bans, as seen in various communities around the state.

This would normally annoy me because I think fracking is being slandered and that it would be great for California. But I’m now doubtful it will ever come to pass in a major way in a place where the green religion is so strong. Anyone who started a petition drive for an anti-fracking California ballot initiative would have millions of dollars quickly pouring in from the usual billionaire lefties. I’m surprised some lefty consultant doesn’t start up such a drive without even having a client first; it wouldn’t take long to find a deep-pockets patron.

So instead, I will choose to enjoy the discomfiture of CA greens as fracking continues to be one of the world’s great economic phenomena, despite their stern and pious disapproval. Outside of California, billionaire lefties don’t stand a chance against public opinion (very, very, very pro-cheap energy) and Big Oil. Schadenfreude is going to be fun.

But I will also enjoy the CA green freakout because the longer that fracking goes on without anything close to a Love Canal-level enviro disaster, the tougher it will be for the public to take seriously the sky-is-falling rhetoric from fracking haters.

The traditional, much dirtier, much less efficient version of hydraulic fracturing that was used from the 1940s until 2006 or so didn’t lead to a Love Canal. If one happened now, it would in goofy ways be akin to a religious miracle.

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.

Mostly because of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s dithering and pandering,  nothing seems to be changing in the Empire State, where a fracking moratorium is looking more and more permanent.

But Europe is having second thoughts about its green energy policies.

First came the stories about the crushing economic burden facing Euro nations because of the forced shift to renewable energy. This, of course, has deep implications for California and its AB 32 experiment.

Now comes along another story with implications for the Golden State and its nascent efforts to regulate fracking and bring the Monterey Shale’s vast oil wealth into our economy. A once-deeply skeptical British government now says fracking is safe. This is from Reuters:

“The risks to public health from emissions caused by fracking for shale oil and gas are low as long as operations are properly run and regulated, the British government’s health agency said on Thursday.

“Public Health England (PHE) said in a review that any health impacts were likely to be minimal from hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which involves the pumping of water and chemicals into dense shale formations deep underground.

“Environmental campaigners have staged large anti-fracking protests in Britain, arguing that it can pollute groundwater and cause earthquakes. …

“Since there is currently no fracking in Britain, the PHE report examined evidence from countries such as the United States, where it found that any risk to health was typically due to operational failure.

“The currently available evidence indicates that the potential risks to public health from exposure to emissions associated with the shale gas extraction process are low if operations are properly run and regulated,” said John Harrison, director of PHE’s center for radiation, chemical and environmental hazards.”

It’s just another dirty-but-manageable heavy industry

Which brings us to another angle with implications for California. British regulators consulted with U.S. regulators. And surprise, surprise, the Obama administration experts said what they’ve said for years: fracking is just another dirty heavy industry that can be made tolerable with basic regulations.

The angle for California here? The astounding newspaper blackout in the Golden State of the fact that the Obama administration considers fracking safe.

Here’s a look at egregious “analysis” by the Sac Bee’s Tom Knudson.

Here’s a look at the staggering breadth of Obama-fracking-view-omitters on the staff of the L.A. Times.

Here’s a look at the single most stunning example of California media disinformation on Obama and fracking, which contrasts how the L.A. Times covered a press conference on fracking with Obama’s commerce secretary with how the New York Times covered the same event.

Bias in reporting rarely is easier to document than this: The vast majority of CA reporters covering fracking never even mention that the administration of the greenest president in history thinks that it is safe.

Hey, newsrooms of California, isn’t that news?

Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?