Despite the Obama Administration’s war on coal, the draconian regulation of so-called “greenhouse gases” and a freeze on offshore drilling, the U.S. energy sector has seen a dramatic rise in oil output on private land from “fracking”.
Fracking is a method of oil extraction that involves injecting fluids under high pressure into cracks in oil formations allowing once unrecoverable oil and gas deposits to flow at sharply reduced costs.
As a result, the international market for a barrel of oil is down from a high of $100 or more to $60 leading prices at the pump to drop dramatically to less than $3 a gallon in many areas of the country saving consumers more than $300 million a day in gas prices.
That’s not the only benefit that comes from American fracking.
America’s adversaries – particularly Russia and Iran – rely heavily on oil and gas revenues to fund their domestic budgets and their foreign adventures in places like the Ukraine, the Middle East and other hot spots overseas.
With world oil prices flat or falling, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Iranian’s mullahs will need to take a step back and reassess the cost benefit analysis of continued interference beyond their national borders – financial strains that experts predict will only intensify as North American oil production continues to rise in the year ahead.
Predictably, the Obama Administration and congressional democrats see these developments as a problem.
Earlier this month, in a last ditch effort to survive her run-off election against Congressman Bill Cassidy, Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu tried but failed to pass the long stalled Keystone XL pipeline through the Senate despite veto threat from Obama Administration officials. The vote to proceed on the pipeline bill was defeated 59 – 41 votes including 39 Democrats voting against. She lost the run-off election by a nearly identical margin of 56% to 44% of the vote.
