Imagine what the world would look like today if US fracking technology and America’s wildcat drillers had not delivered the shale revolution.
The liberal democracies would have their backs to the wall.
All those books about the death of the West would be all too credible, including the latest bestseller in France, La Défaite de l’Occident by Emmanuel Todd, a modern outing of Oswald Spengler’s dark classic in the 1920s.
A vertical oil drilling rig in Midland, Texas: America has gone from energy-import basket case in 2008 to become the world’s largest producer of crude oil, petroleum products and natural gas.Credit: Bloomberg
This Gallic Anglo-bashing and Kremlin apologia manages to skip over the elemental geopolitical fact that America has gone from energy-import basket case in 2008 to become the world’s largest producer of crude oil, petroleum products and natural gas by a wide margin.
The US has been adding a new North Sea every three years. Feedstock from cheap domestic gas has driven a secular revival of the US chemical industry, which you can see in the petrochemical corridor stretching across the Gulf Coast from Galveston to New Orleans.
The Rust Belt from Pennsylvania to Ohio has returned to life as the Plastics Belt. The American Chemical Association says the industry exports $US180 billion ($269 billion) a year. The shale effect has led to 351 projects since 2010, pulling in a quarter of a trillion of global investment in petrochemicals alone.
Kamala Harris called for a fracking ban in 2019 and regretted it, learning from the derision that no candidate has a prayer of reaching the White House with such unworldly, Left-Californian reflexes. For starters, you have to win the 19 electoral college votes of Pennsylvania, home to Marcellus shale.
Three and a half years as US vice president have since given her a crash course in energy security and global........