U.S. Energy Promises 3.6 Million Jobs

The U.S. fossil fuel energy news — and its potential for rebuilding our stalled economy — gets better and better. Citigroup Inc. estimated in a March report that a 'reindustrialization' of America could add as many as 3.6 million jobs by 2020 and increase the gross domestic product by as much as 3 percent. Bloomberg's Asjylyn Loder reports:

• U.S. natural gas production will expand to a record this year, and oil output swelled in July to its highest point since 1999.
• A surge in U.S. natural gas development has spurred $226 billion in spending plans on pipelines, storage, processing facilities and power plants, most slated for the next five years.
• The expansion of fossil-fuel production - coupled with a weak economy and increased energy efficiency - has helped the U.S. pare its crude oil imports by 17 percent since the 2005 peak
• Increased production and swelling domestic stockpiles have helped make energy cheaper in the U.S. than in other countries.
• So far, the economic benefits have been confined to states such as Louisiana, Texas, and North Dakota, but there are signs the economic gains have begun to expand beyond the oil and gas fields to industries from steel, aluminum, automobiles, fertilizers and chemicals. Orascom Construction Industries, for example, is investing $250 million restarting an ammonia and methanol plant in Texas, and another Orascom subsidiary may build a $1.3 billion fertilizer plant in Iowa that would create as many as 2,000 construction jobs and 165 permanent positions.

"This is one of those rare opportunities that every country looks for and few ever get," said Phillip Verleger, a former director of the office of energy policy at the U.S. Treasury Department and founder of PKVerleger LC, a consulting firm in Carbondale, Colorado. "This abundance of energy gives us an opportunity to rebuild our economy."

Full story: America's Energy Seen Adding 3.6 Million Jobs Along with 3% GDP.

Debunking the US-in-permanent-decline Conventional Wisdom

"We are witnessing a seismic shift in global affairs," writes Victor Davis Hanson, and none of the conventional US-is-in-permanent-decline wisdom "now seems very wise." Consider the "political, demographic and technological change that will soon make the world as we have known it for the last 30 years almost unrecognizable:"

• The European Union, until recently thought to be an emerging powerhouse, is unraveling.
• The Arab Middle East for the last 40 years seemed to be the world's cockpit, as its huge petroleum reserves brought in trillions of dollars from an oil-depleted West. Now the Arab Middle East is in free fall.
• Tiny oil-poor Israel, thanks to vast new offshore finds, has been reinvented as a potential energy giant in the Middle East. Such petrodollars will change Israel as they did the Persian Gulf countries, but with one major difference. Unlike Dubai or Kuwait, Israel is democratic, economically diverse, socially stable, and technologically sophisticated, suggesting the sudden windfall will not warp Israel in the manner it has traditional Arab autocracies, but will instead become a force multiplier of an already dynamic society.
• China is not only resource-poor but politically impoverished. For decades we were told that Chinese totalitarianism, mixed with laissez-faire capitalism, led to sparkling airports and bullet trains, while a litigious and indulgent America settled for a run-down LAX and creaking Amtrak relics. But the truth is that the Los Angeles airport will probably look modern sooner than the Chinese will hold open elections amid a transparent society -- given that free markets did not make China democratic.
• Horizontal drilling and fracking have made oil shale and tar sands rich sources of oil and natural gas, so much so that the United States may prove to possess the largest store of fossil-fuel reserves in the world — in theory, with enough gas, oil, and coal, we will soon never need any imported Middle Eastern energy again. “Peak oil” is suddenly an anachronism. Widespread American use of cheap natural gas will do more to clean the planet than thousands of Solyndras. 

If the United States utilizes its resources, then its present pathologies — massive budget and trade deficits, mounting debt, strategic vulnerability — will start to subside. 
These new breakthroughs in petroleum engineering are largely American phenomena, reminding us that there is still something exceptional in the American experience that periodically offers the world cutting-edge technologies and protocols — such as those pioneered by Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Starbucks, and Walmart.

New US Oil, Gas Drilling = 1 Million New Jobs, $800 Billion New Revenue

A new study released this month is sure to fuel the debate over US domestic energy policy. The graphic-rich report shows the extent to which current US energy policies are cheating Americans of domestic oil and natural gas resources, as well as the jobs and government revenues that come with them. Key results of the study are: