The American Energy Revolution: From India's Perspective

Don sent me an interesting Forbes article.

I'm not as interested in the Indian perspective so much as what the article says about the American energy revolution.

China’s rise has come largely at Europe’s expense. Since 2004, China has gained market share in the export of goods and of manufactured goods, while Europe’s share is falling and the US has held steady. After losing 6 million manufacturing jobs in the last decade, the US gained half a million in the last 18 months, while Europe, Canada and Japan lost jobs or saw no change.

Sharma also points out that energy is emerging as an American competitive advantage. After falling for 25 years, the share of the US energy supply that comes from domestic sources has been rising since 2005, from 69 percent to around 80 percent, due to increasing production of oil and particularly natural gas. The textile business was one of the first to leave the developed world, but recently Santana Textiles moved from Mexico to the US due to lower energy costs.

In the 1960s, the US Gulf of Mexico was the hub of the global petrochemical industry. This changed over the years, as it became cheaper to produce in Asia and the Middle East. The shale revolution has led to a revival of interest in the region. Dow Chemicals has re-started its Texas cracker plant in December last year—it had been moth-balled in 2008-09, when the slowdown began. Dow is also putting up another huge facility at Freeport, Texas, that is coming online in 2016-17. “The idea is to take advantage of the low prices, to serve the Latin American market from the US. We are also doing this in Saudi Arabia—using the oil to cater to the European markets,” says Vipul Shah, CEO and chairman, Dow India.

I am looking for a huge American resurgent after 2016. I hate to imagine the country could elect a more obstructionist president who was handed the most fortuitous energy gift of any US president in history, and failed to capitalize on it.