WPR's The New Rules: U.S. Clutching for Straws With Energy Independence

Monday, December 5, 2011 at 9:07AM
Thomas P.M. Barnett in China, US, WPR Column, energy, extractive industries

The United States is on the verge of an industrial renaissance, according to energy experts enthusiastic about technological advances surrounding the “fracking” of shale gas and the processing of “tight oil.” America is sitting on a century-worth of natural gas, and the Western hemisphere boasts five times the reserves in unconventional oil as the Middle East claims in the conventional category. Suddenly, all our fears of resource wars with China and never-ending quagmires in Southwest Asia seem to melt away, heralding with great certainty another American century based on the promise of energy independence. As “deus ex machina” moments go, this one arrives just in time for a nation magnificently down on its luck and itself.

Read the entire column at World Politics Review.

Article originally appeared on Thomas P.M. Barnett (https://thomaspmbarnett.com/).