US Energy Independence Might Happen in the Next 5 Years

What is good news for our country will be pretty bad news for people that hate us that happen to live on top of vast oil reserves.

Citigroup's Edward Morse, in a new report, projects a dramatic reshaping of the global energy industry, where the U.S., in a matter of years, becomes an exporter of energy, instead of one of the biggest importers. 

The shift could sharply reduce the price of oil, and therefore limit the revenues of the producing nations of OPEC, as well as Russia and West Africa. Those nations face new challenges: not only are the U.S. and Canada increasing output, but Iraq increasingly is realizing its potential as an oil producer, adding 600,000 barrels a day of production annually for the next several years.

It will be nice to know that whenever I fill up gas it is from oil produced in the US or Canada and not Venezuela. The report also goes on to say that Iran, Nigeria, Venezuela, and maybe even Russia might become unstable because of the US going independent of oil.

I mean they lose their biggest source of revenue so they will have to find something else to export or there will be a crisis. You can't pay for all the socialism of Dear Leader Hugo if America no longer buys his top product. This might also hasten the fall of the Mullahs as well. I mean they already have a crisis due to sanctions and shutting down refining capacity. Imagine what $70 oil will do to them if they are losing money on every barrel they pull out of the ground?

Also the report goes into how a natural gas boom will create new opportunities in manufacturing and transportation that was not there before. The idea of retrofitting our truck fleet for natural gas will create quite a few new jobs. I could also see trains running on natural gas based fuel instead of diesel fuel as well. It will be nice to get some of our heavy industry back from Japan and China and create a new generation of industrial jobs.

In any case the report says that energy independence will be paying dividends as early as this year. As more oil pipelines are being built and more oil flows in from Canada we will be importing less oil from everywhere else. West African crude shipments might start to become unnecessary by the end of the year. That is bad for OPEC and Nigeria but it will certainly be nice for the American consumer.