Think Again: The American Energy Boom

I have a new essay in the July/August issue of Foreign Policy, out today, that takes aim at some of the emerging conventional wisdom surrounding the American oil and gas boom. Some of the themes will be familiar to readers of this blog. Others will be new. Collectively, I hope, they’ll spur some new thinking about what’s happening in the United States.

The essay drills down on six claims:

• “The United States is the Next Saudi Arabia of Energy
• “The United States Could be Energy Independent”
• “We Can Drill Our Way Out of High Prices”
• “The U.S. Energy Boom Will Create Millions of New Jobs”
• “Strong Regulations Would Kill the Boom”
• “The Energy Boom is Bad for Climate Change”
• “Barack Obama is Bad for the Oil and Gas Industry”

Want to know my answers to each of these? Take a look at the article. I’ll have more to say about some of the details in the piece (for example, on how U.S. oil output could affect OPEC dynamics and world prices) in future posts.