America's energy boom is changing geopolitics, just as Reagan foresaw

Hydraulic fracturing is performing miracles — expanding the economy, providing affordable energy almost anywhere politicians allow drilling, and improving air quality. Meanwhile, America’s abundant oil and gas is changing geopolitics by reducing our dependence on foreign sources and freeing our hand to act in the nation’s and our fellow human beings’ best interests. This is what Ronald Reagan envisioned when he became president nearly four decades ago.
In 1981, Reagan faced a nation reeling from double-digit unemployment, double-digit inflation, and double-digit interest rates. He knew the economy could not grow without reliable sources of energy, for which the United States depended on foreign sources. Meanwhile, that dependence governed the nation’s foreign policy. Reagan saw the economy, energy, and foreign policy linked inextricably with one solution: develop energy on federal lands — onshore and offshore. Of course, Reagan bristled at the term “federal lands,” declaring, “Isn’t it time we remembered that the very term means it belongs to us — to the people of America?”
Reagan advocated development of federally owned energy for years in his radio broadcasts after stepping down as California’s governor in 1975. His optimism that the United States had abundant undeveloped energy stood in sharp contrast to conventional wisdom. After all, in 1977, President Jimmy Carter declared that oil and natural gas “are running out" and that the country must make "profound changes ... to lower oil consumption."
Reagan thought this ridiculous. “If all the oil is going to be gone in 30 years, does it really make much difference if we make it last 33?” When he learned Carter barred drilling in the Rocky Mountains, Reagan declared, “Why is the government so anxious to lock up this [federal] land[?] Is it a fear that more [natural gas] strikes will be made?” Reagan’s optimism had three foundations.
First, he did not believe the federal government’s energy estimates. “I don’t buy the CIA’s report quoted by [President Carter that] has us running out of oil in about 30 years,” Reagan said. He felt the prediction was dubious because he'd studied similar predictions made dating back to 1910. “In 1949, our Department of the Interior said the end of the U.S. oil supply was in sight. We increased production in the next five years by a million barrels a day.”
Second, Reagan believed, as to energy, “government is the problem,” not only because “the federal government owns one-third of the United States,” but also because much of that land holds vast energy resources that are off limits to development. For example, reported Reagan, in an area where “one of the richest natural gas strikes in years was made within recent months,” agencies sought to close 90 million acres.
Third, Reagan offered a simple solution to the “energy crisis” abandoned by the Carter administration: “Why don’t we try the free market again?” Recognize, he said, the oil and gas industry is not a monopoly; independent operators make most discoveries: “About 80% of the finding of new oil has been done — not by the giant oil companies but by independents [that] have been the hardest hit by government’s punitive policies.”

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William Perry Pendley (@Sagebrush_Rebel) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is an attorney and the author of Sagebrush Rebel: Reagan's Battle with Environmental Extremists and Why It Matters Today.