STILL NOT TIRED OF WINNING: American Oil and Gas Surge to New Highs.

Shale companies are using hydraulic fracturing to harness a flood of new supplies of hydrocarbons. On the oil side of things, American production has surged from 8.5 million barrels per day (bpd) in October to nearly 9.3 million bpd today—a nearly 10 percent jump in just six months. As the EIA reports, much of that growth is being fueled by west Texas’s Permian Basin. . . .

The last U.S. Geological Survey estimate pegged the Permian Basin’s riches at potentially more than 20 billion barrels of oil and 16 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of natural gas—a veritable bounty. That shale formation is the undisputed engine of this newest shale renaissance.

This oil rebound has come about as a result of OPEC & co.’s decision to cut output to help push prices back up—a move that has helped shale producers as much (if not more) than it has assisted those petrostates.

But natural gas output is surging as well, perhaps a more remarkable feat considering that American production of that hydrocarbon hasn’t suffered as much (though it has declined slightly) as a result of falling global prices. Even in the midst of this natural gas surge, new EIA data shows that natural gas production in the continental U.S. had its biggest monthly increase in February in almost three years. . . .

U.S. shale still produces only a fraction of global oil and gas output, but that fraction is large enough—and has come on the scene quickly enough—to push supply past demand and help keep energy prices relatively low. At the same time, it’s given America more foreign policy options by bolstering our domestic energy security, and changing the tenor of the U.S. energy debate from one focused on scarcity to today’s paradigm of abundance.

Have you hugged a fracker today? A few years ago I had dinner with a former student and her husband, a big investor into fracking. “You’re saving Western Civilization,” I told him. I wasn’t wrong.