The private sector isn’t waiting on career politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. to give Americans an energy policy that many of us don’t want. Over the last year, there has been an explosion in natural gas found right here in the United States.
According to the Colorado School of Mines, the U.S. now has 1,800 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, a third of which was previously trapped in shale. These reserves are the equivalent of 320 billion barrels of oil and are located in Colorado, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, and other states. For comparison, it is estimated that Saudi Arabia has 264 billion barrels of oil.
Was this new discovery the result of a top-down national energy policy in Washington? No, it was the result of a new technique (hydraulic fracturing) developed in the late 1990s by a small company called Mitchell Energy & Development. The private sector will need to resolve how to retrieve the gas without danger to the environment – but solving for this important consideration can be done without the heavy hand of government regulation. Likewise, coal companies like St. Louis-based Peabody Energy are at the forefront of clean coal development. As my old boss Dick Armey is fond of saying, “Freedom Works.”
Let’s unleash the entrepreneurial spirit of Americans to fix our problems, not hamstring businesses with yet another Rube Goldberg-scheme like cap-and-trade.
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