Just six months ago, the Trump
administration was attacked for its "slow start." It was said
to be "in disarray," in "chaos," "at war" with
itself, and incapable of governing. Now the list of successes has piled
up, making it clear that, if the trend continues, President Trump will become
one of our more important presidents. Far from being a do-nothing
administration, the Trump team is a White House on steroids.
One of the president's major successes is in the area of energy
policy. Along with energy secretary Rick Perry, the president is
overseeing the recovery of the American energy sector from the low point it hit
under the Obama administration. By a combination of executive orders
totally restrictiong drilling on federal lands and EPA assaults on fracking and
coal-mining, including a total ban on mountaintop-mining, Obama prosecuted a
"war" not just on coal, but on fossil fuels generally.
Now America has become the largest producer of oil and gas and a
major exporter of natural gas. The U.S. now produces significantly more
hydrocarbons than second-place Russia and twice as much as Saudi Arabia.
As coal-mining is restored, pipelines are laid, and new wells are
drilled, hundreds of thousands of jobs are being created across the economy,
not just in drilling and mining, but in support services.
The effect on the economy is already being felt. According
to Monster.com, a leading employment recruitment site, oil jobs are
making a "huge comeback," with "100,000 new jobs by 2018."
And these are high paying jobs: "the average pay of the oil and gas
industry is 85%
higher than the national average." Each new job in the
energy field creates others in areas like steel production, rig technology,
transportation, and general services. And the money earned in these high
paying fields circulates through the economy.
With the passage of a provision in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
allowing oil exploration in ANWR, the president has another success. The
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge contains vast reserves of recoverable oil
currently estimated at10.4
billion barrels. Development has been blocked by misguided and ill
informed opposition from environmental groups. Now, with great care for
the environment, oil companies will have the opportunity to produce vast
amounts of energy while drilling only 3% of ANWR.
According to a report from the
House Committee on Natural Resources, "total governmental revenue"
from ANWR drilling will run $440 billion. ANWR alone will create between
55,000 and 130,000 new high paying jobs.
It is not just ANWR. By removing unnecessary restrictions on
fracking and by opening other federal lands to drilling, President Trump is
promoting energy independence rather than standing in its way. He has
opened federal lands for drilling, including land in two national monuments in
southern Utah. Vast federal lands in the Western U.S. offer other
opportunities.
In April, the president signed an executive order reversing
Obama's ban on new offshore drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic.
Current estimates
show that almost 90 billion barrels of oil and 327 trillion cubic feet
of natural gas lie under the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf. Those
estimates have a way of being revised upward, especially for regions such as these
that have not been explored with modern technology due to past restrictions.
Offshore drilling has the potential to produce ten times the number of
jobs and government revenue projected for ANWR. At the high end, that
would be 1,300,000 high paying jobs and $4.4 trillion in state and federal
revenue.
Under President Obama, American coal-mining suffered a near-death
experience. Now, under EPA director Scott Pruitt, the Trump
administration is taking steps to restore coal to its rightful place in
America's energy supply mix. Though it will take years to complete, the
reversal of Obama's Clean Power Plan that began back in October will
take government out of the frame of "picking winners and losers."
Coal will still have to compete with natural gas, but at least it will be
allowed to compete.
The president's accomplishments in the field of energy policy are
not limited to fossil fuels. His Energy Department recently committed
$100 million to promoting Transformative Energy Projects intended to
spur early-stage innovators. The department continues to promote
alternative energy sources and energy conservation, important contributors to
energy independence. Energy conservation in particular can go a long way
toward making America energy-independent.
With the opening of new lands to fracking and conventional
drilling and the restoration of mining in the Appalachian region, the energy sector
has gone from moribund to robust practically overnight. One of the
president's first actions wasthe
elimination of the Steam Protection Rule, which imposed crippling
burdens of regulation on the industry. As a result, production has begun
to increase.
As the U.S. Energy Information Agency's annual
"Outlook" makes clear, the
future for American energy production is bright. The Outlook models
future production across a wide range of different scenarios, and it concludes
that the U.S. "is projected to become a net energy exporter by 2026"
in its Reference Case projections but that it may do so earlier under three
side cases. After 2026, the scale of exports expands rapidly in all cases.
Perhaps the most consequential of the president's actions in the
field of energy is his decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord.
While withdrawal from the accord does not have significant immediate
consequences, its long-term effect is great. Its most important effect
will be to reduce the possibility of a deluge of environmental lawsuits based
largely on the agreement signed by President Obama. These lawsuits would
have blocked American energy production to gratify a self-appointed global
environmental elite – at the expense of the American people.
The president's accomplishments are many, but energy stands out.
America is now the world's premiere producer of fossil fuels. In
just one year, we have gone from a dismal future, in which the government
planned to shut down fossil fuels almost entirely by mid-century, to a
nation on the cusp of total energy independence. "Make America Great
Again" was not just a clever campaign slogan; it is a reality in the field
of energy production, as in so many other areas under President Trump.
Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on
American culture including Heartland of the Imagination (2011).
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/12/trumps_energy_success.html
