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Guns Guns Guns
Guest
The oil and gas industry is vastly increasing production, reversing two decades of decline.
Using new technology and spurred by rising oil prices since the mid-2000s, the industry is extracting millions of barrels more a week, from the deepest waters of the Gulf of Mexico to the prairies of North Dakota.
For decades, consumption rose, production fell and imports increased, and now every one of those trends is going the other way.
How the country made this turnabout is a story of industry-friendly policies started by President Bush and largely continued by President Obama — many over the objections of environmental advocates — as well as technological advances that have allowed the extraction of oil and gas once considered too difficult and too expensive to reach.
But mainly it is a story of the complex economics of energy, which sometimes seems to operate by its own rules of supply and demand.
With gasoline prices now approaching record highs and politicians mud-wrestling about the causes and solutions, the effects of the longer-term rise in production can be difficult to see.
Simple economics suggests that if the nation is producing more energy, prices should be falling.
But gasoline and diesel are global commodities whose prices are affected by factors around the world.
Not only has the United States reduced oil imports from members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries by more than 20 percent in the last three years, it has become a net exporter of refined petroleum products like gasoline for the first time since the Truman presidency.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/b...ward-energy-independence-in-america.html?_r=1
Using new technology and spurred by rising oil prices since the mid-2000s, the industry is extracting millions of barrels more a week, from the deepest waters of the Gulf of Mexico to the prairies of North Dakota.
For decades, consumption rose, production fell and imports increased, and now every one of those trends is going the other way.
How the country made this turnabout is a story of industry-friendly policies started by President Bush and largely continued by President Obama — many over the objections of environmental advocates — as well as technological advances that have allowed the extraction of oil and gas once considered too difficult and too expensive to reach.
But mainly it is a story of the complex economics of energy, which sometimes seems to operate by its own rules of supply and demand.
With gasoline prices now approaching record highs and politicians mud-wrestling about the causes and solutions, the effects of the longer-term rise in production can be difficult to see.
Simple economics suggests that if the nation is producing more energy, prices should be falling.
But gasoline and diesel are global commodities whose prices are affected by factors around the world.
Not only has the United States reduced oil imports from members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries by more than 20 percent in the last three years, it has become a net exporter of refined petroleum products like gasoline for the first time since the Truman presidency.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/b...ward-energy-independence-in-america.html?_r=1