How America is becoming more energy independent

America has answered Sarah Palin’s call to “Drill, Baby, Drill!” and we are now in the midst of a tremendous boom in energy exploration.

Today we are drilling with fantastic results, according to what I read recently in The Financial Times  of London. We are in the midst of tremendous boom in energy exploration thanks to new technologies on the oil, natural gas and propane front.

During my whole adult life, we’ve had presidential rhetoric about energy independence. But it was only talk. Over time, we only became steadily more dependent on foreign oil from nations that want to destroy us.

But now in a surprising reversal, we’ve gone from 60% of our energy needs being met by imported oil to 47% in just five short years. And that number is still improving and we’re not close to done.

If we want to get serious, here’s what needs to happen next:

1. We need to convert fleets of delivery trucks to run on natural gas. It’s cheaper and it burns clean to address urban pollution problems.
2. If we continue to make cars more fuel efficient and use clean diesel and hybrid technology, we will be completely free of foreign oil in a shorter time than anybody can imagine. If you take us, Canada and Mexico, we can be a completely energy independent bloc of countries.

There is so much good stuff coming about as a result of all this. We’ll have the benefit of being able to retain dollars that previously flowed overseas to foreign producers, not to mention the jobs that come with industry developments.

North Dakota is Boom Town USA because of new methods of exploring for energy. They can’t find workers to meet all the demand in the state. (Winter’s tough, though!)