America on Way to Energy Independence Despite Fed Gov’t, Obama Policies

Instapundit Glenn Reynolds:

In his weekly radio address, President Obama more or less
took credit for America’s dramatic shift to becoming the world’s
largest energy producer, even as American carbon emissions dropped.
But the headline provided by Investor’s Business
Dailywas more accurate: “Obama: Domestic oil production surges
despite my best efforts.”

In fact, the federal government has limited drilling on federal
land, and taken other steps to make oil production in America
harder. But as Wall Street Journal reporter
Gregory Zuckerman reports in his new book, The
Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire
Wildcatters, the changes — horizontal drilling and hydraulic
fracturing, or “fracking” — were brought about by a bunch of
outsiders working on their own, without help from either the feds
or from Big Oil….

“[W]ildcatters” were able to do something
that the federal government, despite programs ranging
from synfuels to Solyndra, wasn’t: They produced
cheap energy and a big step toward energy independence.

Thanks to the fracking revolution, the air is cleaner, gas is
cheaper, and petro-state dictatorships have less geopolitical
influence. But this happened not as a result of some big-government
program, but as the result of individuals staking their lives and
fortunes on a risky venture, one that, as Zuckerman notes, made
some rich but left others near bankruptcy.