In Saturday's Wall Street Journal, Holman Jenkins has a column on the under reported revolution in natural gas from shale formations.
Just a couple of years ago, we were spending billions in North America to increase our ability to import natural gas via tanker ship from overseas, reflecting the poor prospects for domestic production. Now we are talking, seriously, about the prospects for exporting natural gas to Asia.
As Jenkins points out, none of this success was the result of planning or deliberate policy: it was the market working at its best. One of the reasons for this quiet revolution is the simple fact of geography: many of the finds are in the East and Midwest, where the land is in private hands, rather than the West, where the federal government is the principal landowner.
The key paragraph in Jenkins' piece is the last one:
"The shale gas revolution has been a surprise, in a sector where surprises are still permitted. Nobody "planned" it. There's a lesson here for every kind of reformer: Often the only plan needed is a plan to remove obstacles to innovation."
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