"Nero Drilling While Rome Burns" - US Oil & Gas Output Soars In Year 2 Of Shitstain Era

[hatrack]

Oil and gas development continued to expand dramatically during the second year of the Trump presidency. Experts warn that the administration’s “energy dominance” agenda will have terrible consequences for the climate and the planet, and all that drilling will not get the country any closer to energy independence.

Despite low oil prices, crude oil production in the United States soared from 9.995 million barrels a day in January 2018 to 11.9 million barrels in November, according to the most recent data available from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Over the same period, natural gas production shot up from 95,426 million cubic feet per day to 107,429 cubic feet per day. “Given the sequence of scientific climate reports and climate-linked natural disasters, this is definitely Nero drilling while Rome burns,” says environmental activist Bill McKibben. “History will wonder what we were thinking — or if we were.”

EDIT

The expansion may be even worse than usual for the climate because of the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda. “Under the current administration there’s been a major rollback in oversight of the oil and gas sector, especially methane emissions, leakage, venting and flaring,” says Julie McNamara, an energy analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists. Natural gas contains methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

Worryingly, the rush to drill also positions the country for long-term oil and gas use rather than a transition to renewables. “The infrastructure lock-in that comes from this developments puts us on a course that we won’t soon be able to shake,” says McNamara. “One you build something, it’s very hard to move away from it. The outcome from this will be either a massive amount of stranded assets or it will be something where we’ll just keep burning fossil fuels because the infrastructure is already built. It makes the pivot to clean energy all that much harder.”

EDIT

https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/02/28/nero-drilling-rome-burns-us-oil-gas-production-soars-trump-second-year

[littlemissmartypants]

1. And fracking is the leading cause of greenhouse gas. nt