Doofus-In-Chief Revisited -- December 24, 2019

From the WSJ, December 17, 2019:

Ten years ago (80% of which Obama was president), the U.S. ranked third in global oil production, trailing Saudi Arabia and Russia.

A decade later (20% of which Trump was president), the US leads the world in oil as well as natural-gas output, having more than doubled the amount of crude it pumps while raising gas production by roughly two-thirds, according to federal data.

There is a simple reason for the surge: fracking. Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing techniques spurred a historic U.S. production boom during the decade that has driven down consumer prices, buoyed the national economy and reshaped geopolitics.
Though some of these methods had existed for years, they were successfully applied to dense rock formations only about two decades ago as technologies improved, allowing companies to unlock vast amounts of oil and gas.

Drillers first targeted natural gas in the Barnett Shale of North Texas, and later unleashed a trove of the fuel in Appalachia. Further advances allowed them to release heavier oil molecules from shale formations. That led to a renaissance of one of America’s most venerable oil fields, the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico.

A decade ago, drilling and fracking in tight rock formations such as shale produced less than one million barrels of oil a day in the U.S., according to data from the Energy Information Administration. Today that figure is roughly eight million barrels a day.

In fact, the WSJ has that wrong: fracking was only partly responsible. Takeaway capacity -- either CBR or pipelines -- was absolutely critical. But there were many, many other factors, such as government regulations (or lack of regulations). But to say this was 100% due to fracking is completely missing the real story. 

President Obama's core competencies:

• appearing presidential
• killing pipelines
• explaining drilling to Americans

Doofus-in-Chief