The Key to Energy Development

Mark Perry's blog is a font of energy data, notably production figures, that the average person would do well to peruse and understand.  But for us deep in the weeds of energy economics and issues, many of the charts can be hum-drum, we know that US production is racing ahead and we know that US production will continue to race ahead.  But today, Prof. Perry has a graph that is insightful for us all since it shows us why certain energy production is booming and certain energy production is not.

I have talked about "speed" as a corporate value before, not that this is Earth-shattering intellectual thinking since any dodo understands that time is money.  But the the most dynamic corporations look to maximize speed within other constraints (i.e. safety, risk) and seek to manage it where they can.  One of the great myths of China's boom was that it's cheap labor was so attractive to foreign companies.  Yes, the labor was cheap, but there is cheap labor all over the world.  What China understands and excels at is getting things done quickly.  Here in the US, there is an abundance of oil and gas, so where do you spend money drilling?  You spend it where there is the shortest amount of time laying out the dough for the rights to the land and laying out the dough for actual drilling.  Smart states looking for goose economic development understand this.  Clearly the Feds don't, although I am of the opinion that of course they understand it, and the excessive delays are a feature not a bug.