Energy has already
been a key feature of the presidential campaign so far, even if gasoline prices
fell from their springtime peak.
Barack Obama has given his "all-of-the-above" energy speech all over
the place; Mitt Romney has prominently toured the new American oil patch to
assail the Obama administration's policies. There's that Solyndra case. And Mr.
Romney's own solar push as governor. Political fact-checker types have a macro
installed for debunking specious claims about energy.
A new report out Monday from HarvardUniversity's BelferCenter
for Science and International Affairs should throw some more gasoline on the
fire. Far from the worry over "peak oil" that helped define the 2008
presidential election amid record-high oil prices, the world is practically
swimming in the stuff, the report says.
Penned by Leonardo Maugeri, a former executive at Italy's ENI who's spent years arguing that technology will
unleash a new wave of oil production, the report offers plenty of ammunition
for pro-drilling forces. In a nutshell, thanks to new drilling techniques, once
off-limits oil fields in the U.S.
could yield millions of barrels of oil a day over the next decade, turning the
country in the world's second-largest oil producer.
"The shale/tight oil boom in the United States is not a temporary
bubble, but the most important revolution in the oil sector in decades,"
he wrote. Greater U.S.
production of those so-called unconventional oils will spur job creation and
boost energy security, the report concludes, though it won't insulate the U.S. from global price swings in the oil market
or Middle East problems.
Mr. Maugeri has made many of the same arguments for years. But now,
oil-production data is backing him up. The Eagle Ford shale play in Texas, for example, went
from zero production to 300,000 barrels a day by December. Other fields have
expanded even more dramatically.
It's a stark contrast to the 2008 election, when record-high oil prices and
worries about declining oil production in key countries prompted so much angst
about the energy future. Republicans coined "Drill, baby, drill,"
while Mr. Obama championed a broader approach to energy policy that favored
renewable energy, electric cars and alternative fuels.
As president, Mr. Obama has embraced some traditional energy production: U.S. oil
production has risen on his watch, and is at the highest point in 14 years, and
he has embraced the related boom in natural-gas production. But he has also
doubled down on clean energy, still hopes to promote more electric cars, and
nixed some oil-infrastructure projects, such as the Keystone XL pipeline, that
are important to gird the U.S. oil boom.
The Harvard report does offer one area for pro-drilling conservatives and
environmentally conscious liberals to come together. Noting that political
risk, not geology, is the biggest threat to future oil production, Mr. Maugeri
writes: "A revolution in environmental and emission-curbing technologies
is required to sustain the development of most unconventional oils--along with
a strong enforcement of existing rules. Without such a revolution, a continuous
clash between the industry and environmental groups will force the governments
to delay or constrain the development of new projects."