I’m sure you have often heard politicians utter the mandate (or threat) to “Drill, Baby, Drill!” This is related to the U.S. and its energy production, and the insinuation is that the embattled and over-regulated energy companies have been so badly hamstrung that the oil they are allowed to suck out of the ground is a pitiful trickle, and our problems would all be over if they’d just be allowed to, ya know, do their thing.
The reality, however, is that oil is absolutely roaring from our soil and sands, and the notion that energy companies are somehow being held back is a bit disingenuous.
One specific example is natural gas, which is an export in which the US is now king.
What’s especially interesting is that all of this energy productivity hasn’t meant that every one of us has a derrick in our back yard. On the contrary, there are fewer than a third of the oil rigs in operation today than there were a decade ago!
