Got peak oil? Nope. No, you don't

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Well, this news of energy independence and surpassing Saudi Arabia as a net exporter is certainly welcome and great news amid a past week+ of absolutely horrible news. Let us revel in the following:

The United States will overtake Saudi Arabia to become the world's biggest oil producer before 2020, and will be energy independent 10 years later, according to a new forecast by the International Energy Agency.

The recent resurgence in oil and gas production, and efforts to make the transport sector more efficient, are radically reshaping the nation's energy market, reported Paris-based IEA in its World Energy Outlook.

North America would become a net exporter of oil around 2030, the global organization said Monday.

"The United States, which currently imports around 20% of its total energy needs, becomes all but self sufficient in net terms -- a dramatic reversal of the trend seen in most other energy importing countries," the IEA stated.

The U.S. is experiencing an oil boom, in large part thanks to high world prices and new technologies, including hydraulic fracking, that have made the extraction of oil and gas from shale rock commercially viable.

From 2008 to 2011, U.S. crude oil production jumped 14%, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Natural gas production is up by about 10% over the same period.

We read the above, like, 3 or 4 times just because it felt so good.



Despite the politicization and demonization of fossil fuels, the shiny object fascination of not-yet-ready-for-market alternative energies and the current administration's efforts to block oil and natural gas exploration, there has been almost an inevitability, an inertia, if you will, that all the aforementioned could not hold back the fact, the inescapable truth, that we just keep finding more and more black sticky stuff in the ground along with the technology to go get it. The President, despite his best efforts, cannot lock up federal land fast enough to keep up with our burgeoning oil boom. Perfectly in keeping with his ideology that he is actively trying to tamp down the one bright spot in our economy.

You haters out there can continue to hate but the inescapable conclusion to all this is that this planet and its global economy will continue to be, literally, fueled by fossil fuel and natural gas that are obtained and applied more cheaply than their green alternatives and which are burned in an increasingly cleaner and more efficient manner making them, quite possibly, the new green energies.

And as far as foreign policy goes, it doesn't take a degree in international relations to realize that less entanglement-by-necessity with petrocratic police states can be filed under "this is a a good thing".

Think about it: if Mexico ever got their act together, what a wonderful geo-political counterbalance to OPEC, Russia and China a natural resources-rich North American cartel of functioning constitutional republics, the U.S., Canda and Mexico would be.

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