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One of the most intense exchanges of the night arose over the question of permitting and oil production on public lands.

In the segment below, Romney claimed that hydrocarbon production on government land is down. He stated that oil production is down 14% and gas production is down 9%.

Although Obama vigorously denied this, the Washington Post states that “Romney’s telling the truth when he says, ‘Production of oil on public land is down 14 percent and production of gas on public land is down 9 percent.’ That’s because energy production on federal lands is down compared to 2010, according to the Energy Information Administration.” However, the Post adds that production is “still higher than where production stood under President George W. Bush.”

The National Journal has a different take because it evaluated three years of production (2008 to 2011) rather than comparing just the last two years. By reviewing production over the longer range, it found both candidates were right and wrong: “Oil production on public lands is up 12 percent from 2008 to 2011, according to a March report by the Energy Information Administration…Natural-gas production on public lands is down 16.5 percent between 2008 and 2011, according to the same EIA report…Coal production on public lands is down 7.8 percent from 2008 to 2011.”

Horizontal drilling and fracking have made oil shale and tar sands rich sources of oil and natural gas, so much so that the United States may prove to possess the largest store of fossil-fuel reserves in the world — in theory, with enough gas, oil and coal never to need any imported Middle Eastern energy again. “Peak oil” suddenly is an anachronism. Widespread American use of cheap natural gas will do more to clean the planet than thousands of Solyndras.

If the United States uses its resources, its present pathologies — massive budget and trade deficits, mounting debt, strategic vulnerability — will start to subside. These new breakthroughs in petroleum engineering are largely American phenomena, reminding us that there still is something exceptional in the American experience that periodically offers the world cutting-edge technologies and protocols — such as those pioneered by Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Starbucks and Wal-Mart.

In comparison, China is not only resource-poor but politically impoverished. For decades, we were told that Chinese totalitarianism, when mixed with laissez-faire capitalism, led to sparkling airports and bullet trains, while a litigious and indulgent America settled for a run-down Los Angeles airport and creaking Amtrak relics. But the truth is that LAX probably will look modern sooner than the Chinese will hold open elections amid a transparent society — given that free markets did not make China democratic, only more contradictory.

Even more surreal, tiny, oil-poor Israel, thanks to vast new offshore finds, has been reinvented as a potential energy giant in the Middle East. Petrodollars will change Israel as they did the Persian Gulf countries, but with one major difference. Unlike Dubai or Kuwait, Israel is democratic, economically diverse, socially stable and technologically sophisticated, suggesting that the sudden windfall will not warp Israel as it did traditional Arab autocracies, but will instead become a force multiplier of an already dynamic society. Will Europe still snub Israel when it has as much oil, gas and money as a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in the Persian Gulf?

Who would have thought that a few fracking innovators in Texas would change the world’s carbon footprint far more than did Nobel laureate Al Gore — while offering a way for the U.S. to be energy-independent? Or that Angela Merkel, not the European Union, would run Europe? Or that Arabs would be overthrowing Arabs as oil-rich Israel watched idly?

Posts

Fact Checking Romney’s Claim that Production of Oil on Public Lands is Down (+video)

US: On the Verge of Earth-Shattering Change