...A new report out Monday from Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs should throw some more gasoline on the fire. Far from the worry over “peak oil” that helped define the 2008 presidential election amid record-high oil prices, the world is practically swimming in the stuff, the report says.
Penned by Leonardo Maugeri, a former executive at Italy’s ENI who’s spent yearsarguing that technology will unleash a new wave of oil production, the report offers plenty of ammunition for pro-drilling forces. In a nutshell, thanks to new drilling techniques, once off-limits oil fields in the U.S. could yield millions of barrels of oil a day over the next decade, turning the country in the world’s second-largest oil producer.
“The shale/tight oil boom in the United States is not a temporary bubble, but the most important revolution in the oil sector in decades,” he wrote. Greater U.S. production of those so-called unconventional oils will spur job creation and boost energy security, the report concludes, though it won’t insulate the U.S. from global price swings in the oil market or Middle East problems.
Mr. Maugeri has made many of the same arguments for years. But now, oil-production data is backing him up. The Eagle Ford shale play in Texas, for example, went from zero production to 300,000 barrels a day by December. Other fields have expanded even more dramatically.
It’s a stark contrast to the 2008 election, when record-high oil prices and worries about declining oil production in key countries prompted so much angst about the energy future. Republicans coined “Drill, baby, drill,” while Mr. Obama championed a broader approach to energy policy that favored renewable energy, electric cars and alternative fuels....
Democrats have been the impediment to energy production over the last four decades. Defeating them is the best way to increase energy independence. The dire predictions about the environment have been wrong. It is clear that alternative energy has been a colossal bust. It has also been a very costly flop.
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