"No Country In History Has Extracted As Much Oil As The US In Each Of The Past Six Years"

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Domestic oil and gas production, turbocharged by the advance of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has rocketed. No country in history has extracted as much oil as the US has in each of the past six years, with a fifth of all oil drilled in 2023 being American flavored. US gas production also tops the global charts, having surged 50% in the past decade. Every hour of every day, on average, around 1m barrels of oil and 2m tons of gas are sucked up from oil and gas fields from Texas to Appalachia to Alaska.

The US’s hydrocarbon dominance, coming as experts have warned there can be no new fossil fuel projects if the world is to avoid climate breakdown, challenges conventional assumptions about what makes a “petrostate”. While the vast, diverse US economy doesn’t hinge upon oil and gas like Libya’s and Kuwait’s economies do, some regions have become hooked on industry incomes, research shows. “The US has become a petrostate and is still, even under President Biden, permitting new drilling,” said John Sterman, a climate policy expert at MIT. Nationally, though, it’s been a mostly unheralded ascension. “I bet if you asked 10 people in the US which country was the world’s biggest oil producer, most would say Saudi Arabia,” said Dismukes. “That narrative is so imprinted now. I’m not sure many would even mention the US.”

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Venture Global, an oil and gas operator, is at the vanguard, welcomed by the state with tax breaks and responsible for the Calcasieu Pass facility near Allaire’s property in Cameron, which started operation in 2022 but, according to green groups, already has more than 2,000 violations of its air quality permits through the release of nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, particulate matter and other pollutants. A planned $10bn extension, called Calcasieu Pass 2, or CP2, would shift about 20m tons of LNG at capacity, single-handedly boosting US gas exports by a fifth and causing planet-heating pollution equal to 46 coal-fired power plants. Venture Global has hired two lobbying firms, one headed by former Biden aide Chris Putala, to tout the jobs and investment flowing from the project, but this has not stemmed a furious backlash from environmental groups that have labeled it “climate vandalism”.

There are fears of mounting localized impacts, too, with poorer communities and people of color long bearing the brunt of industrial pollution along the Gulf coast. “Approving CP2 would be signing our death certificate,” said Roishetta Ozane, head of an environmental justice organization in nearby Lake Charles. “Our air smells like rotten eggs, our water is polluted, our children are sick, our family members are dying of cancer. We can’t take any more – enough is enough.” Ozane’s family has twice been displaced by hurricanes, which are being made fiercer by rising global temperatures. Others here, too, have suffered anguish from both the climate crisis and its cause – Travis Dardar, a shrimper, had to flee his home in low-lying Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana, because sea level rise was swamping it, only to end up trying to ply the fisheries off Cameron, a place that became a global LNG industry hotspot. “This used to be a beautiful place, but all the docks are now gone, the shrimp and crab have been poisoned and killed by all the dredging,” Dardar said. “What sustained us for generations has gone; it’s like an alien invasion. CP2 will be the nail in the coffin, it will finish everything off. But we are going to keep fighting it.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/24/fossil-fuel-liquified-natural-gas-louisiana