Back in 2011, as that season’s presidential pandering was getting revved up, the President Obama said we can’t drill our way out of energy problems.

President Obama called for the elimination of billions of dollars in oil industry tax breaks Friday, while stressing that the United States can’t drill its way out of high gas prices. “We can’t just drill our way out of the problem,” Obama said during an energy policy speech in Indiana Friday.

I hate to admit it: Obama is right. We didn’t drill our way out, we fracked our way to a fuel surplus. There has been so much winning recently that OPEC is now complaining.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) asked the U.S. to stop producing so much oil, according to a report Thursday. OPEC’s report blames the U.S. in particular because hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has greatly increased American oil production. The new production has led a lengthy period of very low oil prices. OPEC claims raising global oil prices will “require the collective efforts of all oil producers” and should be done “not only for the benefit of the individual countries, but also for the general prosperity of the world economy.” New American oil production is undermining OPEC’s efforts to keep global prices between $50 and $60 per barrel, with current prices hovering around $47 a barrel. “I think [OPEC] are now acutely aware that they don’t have the kind of influence they used to have 10 years ago, and that shale is now the swing producer in the market,” Tom Pugh, commodities economist at Capital Economics, told CNN Money.

The fracking industry seems to be unbound with President Donald Trump in charge. The petroleum industry actually now has the temerity to demand that anti-fracking stories be labeled by Google as #FakeNews!

An oil and gas drilling advocacy group published an open letter to Google asking the search engine giant to consider “purging or demoting” websites spreading misinformation about hydraulic fracturing. Google rewrote its search engine algorithm to bury “fake news” websites in the wake of the 2016 presidential election. The industry-funded Texans for Natural Gas wants Google to include anti-fracking websites. “We believe many of the most prominent anti-fracking websites have content that is misleading, false, or offensive – if not all three,” the group wrote in an open letter to Google published Monday. “As a result, we urge you to consider purging or demoting these websites from your algorithm, which in turn will encourage a more honest public discussion about hydraulic fracturing, and oil and natural gas development in general,” the group wrote.

Ronald Baily, the science correspondent for Reason magazine, has a great summary of the lies told about fracking. The tall tales of explosions, poisons, pollution, cancer, and global warming are clearly untrue, and should really be the targets of any Google truth campaign.

Tom Shepstone, a contributor for Natural Gas Now, has coined a term for anti-fracking eco-activists: Fractivists. Shepstone has analyzed the data and concludes that there will be fracking “as far as the eye can see.”

Thursday and Friday’s Today In Energy posts from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) together provide a big picture of our energy future. It is one of unstoppable natural gas. Fracking is here to stay. The first post, by Richard Bowers, is about how natural gas has displaced coal in the Northeast with respect to electricity generation. The second, by the EIA staff, is all about the expected decline in nuclear energy capacity and generation. Put them together and all you see is unstoppable natural gas.

I hope my friends in the other 49 states enjoy their lower fuel prices. We Californians not only have to be content with energy suppliers, but also energy taxers.



