You can hear the heightened expectations in the current
business news every trading session. The
exploration and production activities which are cranking up in the Bakken,
Eagle Ford, Marcellus and other plays are producing a glut of oil and gas which
will lead to energy independence and cheaper energy well into the future for
American consumers. Laudable goals and
U.S. citizens which think to the contrary are definitely a minority. The expectations have become so ingrained the
psyche of the market that the forward price curve for the benchmark WTI NYMEX
delivered crude oil shows lower price levels on contracts reaching as far into
the future as can be seen visually in the graph below.
Ironically, the activity in the energy market is happening
during a time period when the sitting U.S. President is resoundingly anti-carbon
based energy and providing only regulatory roadblocks through the Department of
Energy. This information alone should
cause investor skepticism about the ability of the U.S. energy