U.S. Presidents from Nixon through Obama repeated it like a mantra: “America needs to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.”

Jimmy Carter called the energy crisis “the moral equivalent of war.”

Even President Obama, no fan of oil and gas, saw the danger of over dependence on foreign oil.

[President Obama] established a national goal in 2011 to reduce oil imports by one third by 2020 and elevated the goal in 2012 to reduce them by one half by 2020. We are currently on track to meet this ambitious goal if we continue to follow through on the policies that are critical to achieving it.

President Trump trumpets the industry’s success as if it were his own. That’s OK; the industry needs a cheerleader.

Finally, we’re blessed with the abundance we sought for nearly fifty years: Domestic production is at an all-time high, and imports are down a third from 2007. Not only that, we have reduced our dependence on oil from outside of North America to under half our total imports.

Not “energy independence”, necessarily, but we certainly took control of our destiny. Needless to say, our position is much stronger in the world.

But Liz Warren knows better. She’s promised that on the first day of her administration, President Warren will end all new oil and gas leasing on federal lands.

Is it me, or does a lot of this high-soprano hysteria reek of self-loathing? Here we are, having achieved a multi-generational goal, and instead of celebrating, instead of reaping our due rewards, we’re to put on a hair shirt and flagellate until global temps come down 0.5º C??

We are not energy independent. Ceasing federal leasing will necessarily increase our dependence on foreign oil. Federal lease income from royalties is the #2 source of revenue, behind only income taxes. Something like 20% of domestic oil comes from the Federal Gulf of Mexico, which is still yielding sizable discoveries.

We got what we’ve wanted for the last 50 years, and now we hate ourselves for it.

No two ways about it. We, as a society, are nuts.