Journalism, as such, is a bias. If something happened a long time ago, it “isn’t news.”Well, guess what! There are occasions when something happens that you will remember for the rest of your life - 9/11/01, for example - and there are lots of days when nothing happens that you will remember a month later. The idea that whatever happened yesterday is the only thing that matters is equivalent to being “born yesterday.” This is the folly of accepting the journalist’s claim that journalism is “the first draft of history.”
So now, while the fact that US oil production has caused a dramatic break in OPEC’s pricing power is news, all the Grubercrat predictions of “Peak Oil” - and their claims of the futility of “private sector” (a term I despise) action in the marketplace to control oil prices - are ripe for dissection.
If shale by itself has done what we are now seeing, just think what would be happening if - back in the early days of the Bush43 Administration when the president supported it - we had drilled under the mosquito-infested quagmire known as the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR). The Grubercrats predicted that it would take ten years for the effort to have any effect on oil prices. Well, that was about 14 years ago, and by now we would’ve been getting cheaper gas for four years already. In combination with shale and Keystone XL, it would have put paid to OPEC once and for all by now.
I often find this quote highly appropriate.
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —