, Columnist
A Dark Side of the Shale Boom
When you're the world's No. 1 oil and gas power, it can be hard to prepare for a clean energy future.
This is not the future.
Photographer: Brian Wingfield/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
The U.S. will become the world's biggest oil producer, surpassing Russia, in the next five years, the International Energy Agency projected earlier this week. For a domestic oil industry that had been in decline for decades until 2009, it's a spectacular turnaround.
In natural gas, the U.S. is already the top producer (just ahead of Russia) and never saw anything like the decline experienced by oil. But the past decade has been pretty spectacular for gas, too.