Guess which nation has the largest amount of Energy Reserves?

A: The United States. In a report that should be front page news in every newspaper in the country we now know that the USA has Earth's Largest Energy Reserves. Let us repeat that - no country, not Saudi Arabia, not Brazil, not Iran, not Iraq, not China, not Russia but the United States has the worlds largest Energy Reserves! All we have to do is go out and drill and mine it.

In case anyone missed it, let me repeat something that is of a magnitude of 10 on the scale of news-quakes for Joe Public USA: America’s combined energy resources are, according to a new report from the Congressional Research Service (CSR), the largest on earth. They eclipse Saudi Arabia (3rd), China (4th) and Canada (6th) combined – and that’s without including America’s shale oil deposits and, in the future, the potentially astronomic impact of methane hydrates.

The energy facts in the CRS report should be making front page news all over America. Mostly it isn’t. Given the devastating news from Japan and New Zealand, it may be right to postpone dancing in the streets. But something else is going on. Even though they are going to dominate global energy supply for decades to come the insidious war on vital fossil fuels continues apace.
Thus it perhaps falls to a friend of the US (i.e. me) to state that if the White House is in any way serious about impacting the economic Black Hole that is the burgeoning national debt, reinvigorating business big-time, creating real jobs and restoring ebbing national wealth, the best shot by a distance if you’re American ... well, you’re standing on it, or rather above it.

While love, spiritually speaking and in fiction, may make the world go around, it is energy – and mostly hydrocarbon energy – that actually drives it. As blockbuster thrillers sometimes put it, “Who will tell the President?”

Political pantomime

From over here, the lack of a comprehensive US energy policy and the incoherence of President Obama’s political take on energy, reminds me of a pantomime I saw last Christmas, Aladdin. The cave is full of energy riches, but ‘Emperor’ Obama – or is it Wishy-Washy? –refuses to allow the words “open sesame” to be spoken.

Senator Lisa Murkowski, Ranking Member of the Senate Energy and National Resources Committee, takes up the theme: “As we debate ways to reduce gas prices and provide relief to American families and businesses, this report should be required reading for every member of Congress.” How about for every American citizen too, Senator? Murkowski adds, “For the sake of our national security, our economy, and the world’s environment, we need to explore and develop more of our own resources.”

  Read the rest of the story here.