Top three facts about US energy production and geopolitical power

Shale development may be the key to the US remaining the sole superpower for the next two generations. AEI Resident Scholar Derek Scissors explains the United States' unique energy opportunities, the major challenges facing our adversaries, as well as the potential threats to the US energy market.

Read the full report by Derek Scissors and Dan Blumenthal
http://www.aei.org/publication/much-e...

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http://www.aei.org/multimedia/chinese...

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Transcript
Shale production may be the key to the US remaining the sole superpower for the next two generations.

Energy is one of the keys to global political power. The US is in a great position with regard to energy. We have shale, we have gas, we have oil, and more importantly we have competitive markets—anyone can develop them.

Around the world, our rivals are in much worse positions. Everybody knows about Russia’s problems, Venezuela’s problems, but even China—thought to be an economic powerhouse—is far behind the United States. The US is the number one producer of energy in the world, and China is now the number one importer. The reason for that is China doesn’t allow competition. It doesn’t allow private property rights. As a result, production of coal and crude oil are down requiring more imports even if economic growth slows. So while US gas production is soaring, Chinese gas imports are soaring.
In 2008 at the height of the financial crisis, it seemed as if US global was fading away. Now we’re much sought after as an ally, cooperation in energy, trade, US energy production being shipped overseas.

While the US will remain committed to the Middle East, we don’t need to be dependent anymore on Middle Eastern energy producers like Saudi Arabia and Iran. In contrast, China is now the largest importer from the Middle East and could become enmeshed in the same kind of problems in the Middle East that have plagued the United States for the last forty years.

There are plenty of risks to this. Here in the United States we could just decide not to produce as much energy as we have been. We could do that for environmental reasons or just for political reasons. In China, they could return to a path of market reform making the Chinese economy and energy sector much stronger.
Even if everything works out the way we expect in the US and China, other developments could occur such as China moving closer to Russia, threatened by the revitalization of American power.

Seven years ago, Goldman Sachs predicted $200 a barrel oil. That turned out to be completely wrong. What has also turned out to be completely wrong is the inevitable decline of America and the rise of China. In fact, the exact opposite is occurring: the US is rising and China is stagnating.

Top three facts about US energy production and geopolitical power