Shale boom

As President Obama touts the US economic recovery he fails to mention the energy industry. The U.S. will remain the world’s biggest oil producer this year after overtaking Saudi Arabia and Russia as extraction of energy from shale rock spurs the nation’s economic recovery, Bank of America Corp. said. U.S. production of crude oil, along with liquids separated from natural gas, surpassed all other countries this year with daily output exceeding 11 million barrels in the first quarter, the bank said in a report today. The country became the world’s largest natural gas producer in 2010. The International Energy Agency said in June that the U.S. was the biggest producer of oil and natural gas liquids. “The U.S. increase in supply is a very meaningful chunk of oil,”Francisco Blanch, the bank’s head of commodities research, said by phone from New York. “The shale boom is playing a key role in the U.S. recovery. If the U.S. didn’t have this energy supply, prices at the pump would be completely unaffordable.” The US is still importing 7 million barrels per day and if the government would open federal lands to drilling this deficit would be eliminated and gas would drop to two dollars and the economy would grow even more. The next move would be to remove existing laws which prohibit the exporting of oil. This would decrease our balance of payment problem and allow countries like China to move away from coal to oil. Meanwhile the US would continue its move from oil to natural gas.