Commentary
National Affairs

The New Politics of Oil Abundance

Lee Lane on the effects of the shale oil boom

Russell Girsh, a floor hand for Raven Drilling, helps line up a pipe while drilling for oil in the Bakken shale formation on July 23, 2013 outside Watford City, North Dakota. (Andrew Burton/Getty Images)
Russell Girsh, a floor hand for Raven Drilling, helps line up a pipe while drilling for oil in the Bakken shale formation on July 23, 2013 outside Watford City, North Dakota. (Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

Shale oil has boosted U.S. GDP, lowered world oil prices, and added a potent new surge capacity to U.S. oil output that lessens the risk of a global oil supply disruption. These gains dwarf the effects of shale oil on climate change or on the communities where drilling takes place. But shale oil supporters have yet to fully detach the many citizens concerned about drilling’s real, although modest, local costs from the centrally planned campaigns of climate change zealots whose demands flout all reasoned balancing of costs and benefits.

Energy Environment