As righties and lefties argue about the merits of “drill, baby, drill”, the domestic energy industry has quietly been drilling here, now. For natural gas:
production hit a new record level in 2009, breaking the previous record set in 2008. The 2.2% increase in 2009 follows increases of 4.4% in 2008, 4.8% in 2007, and 0.33% in 2006, bringing last year's production to a level 12.2% above the output in 2006.
This surge in domestic natural gas production over the last three years has enabled the United States to overtake Russia as the world's No. 1 producer of natural gas, and is all due to advanced drilling methods now being used to drill for gas through a type of rock known as shale.
Politics are less of an impediment to technology in developing gas reserves. And on the global scale, where U.S. environmental paranoia does not plug the wells, the supply of Texas tea is rising, too. BP increased it’s reserves 29% over production last year. Occidental Petroleum made available 106% more oil than it pumped.
Peak Oil, as it is commonly understood, is as much of fantasy as globalistical warmening.