MAGA: Trump Keeps Oil Promise of Energy Dominance, US Now Rivals Russia
A significant part of President Donald Trump’s promise to make America great again is to make our nation not just energy independent, but dominant in the global market. It appears he is already well on his way to fulfilling that promise.
In November of 2017, Fortune reported that the U.S. stood on the verge of a massive oil and gas production boom over the next few years that will be the biggest increase in energy production the world has ever seen, based on estimates from the International Energy Agency think tank in Paris.
They predicted the U.S. would account for roughly 80 percent of the expected increase in oil production by the mid-2020s, and that in that timeframe the U.S. would also become a net exporter of oil and the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas.
“The U.S. will become the undisputed global oil and gas leader for decades to come,” stated IEA executive director Fatih Birol at a news conference, and added that by 2030, the U.S. was likely to more than double their oil and gas output to more than 31 million barrels per day.
Fast-forward to January 2018, and Reuters has reported that the U.S. oil industry is poised to set a record not seen since the 1970s in breaking the 10 million barrels per day mark in oil production, an achievement no “expert” thought possible just a few short years ago.
But that record likely won’t stand for long, as oil production forecasts estimate that the U.S. could be producing more than 11 million barrels per day by the end of 2019, on par with the production level of Russia, the world’s top oil producer.
This boom will most likely result in U.S. imports of oil being cut by more than one-fifth over the next decade, lower consumer prices for domestically-produced gas to levels not seen since before 2008, and the creation of thousands of high-paying jobs, often in relatively poor rural areas.
As of now, U.S. oil and gas producers are already competing with their Middle Eastern rivals for exports, with the U.S exporting roughly 1.7 million barrels of crude oil and upwards of 3.8 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day. Some terminals formerly used to accept imports are now being retrofitted to allow for exports.
A huge part of this oil and gas boom, aside from the tremendous rollback of restrictive government regulations, is the rapidly advancing technology in the energy sector that has significantly reduced the costs of exploration, drilling and efficient extraction, which has seen new wells open up in as little as a week when it used to take up to a month for production to begin.
The increased production has also led to a boom in industries that support energy production — creating thousands more jobs — and has encouraged some of the larger oil companies that had previously abandoned the U.S. for foreign fields to invest billions of dollars in America once again, in order to tap into the profits just waiting to be dug up.
According to CNBC, one of the biggest drivers of the boom is the surge in output of shale oil production by way of hydraulic fracturing (fracking), which is set to grow by more than 111,000 barrels per day through February for a total output of more than 6.55 million barrels per day. Of that increase, the vast majority of it is expected to come from two major shale regions in Texas, the Permian Basin and Eagle Ford field, which are set to increase output by 76,000 and 15,000 barrels per day, respectively, as well as lesser amounts from other shale regions across the country.
The predicted increase in oil and gas production came from productivity reports by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which also predicted that total U.S. energy production would top 10.3 million barrels per day by next month and 10.8 million barrels per day by the end of the year.
To be sure, there are a lot of factors and assumptions at play in this boom and its predicted continuation, such as other oil producers keeping their own production levels steady, not to mention the current political climate that is favorable to energy production, which could be reversed if Democrats were to regain power in the next two elections.
That said, it may prove difficult for Democrats to argue against policies put in place by Trump and Republicans that have resulted in more money in voters’ pockets by way of tax cuts and reduced energy prices.
Here’s to hoping Trump’s energy boom leads not just to global energy dominance, but political dominance on the domestic front as well.
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