The energy shortage in the U.S. only exists because certain politicians want it.

In spite of what you have been told the U.S. has the largest oil potential than any other known area in the world. We have enough oil in shale to last for hundreds of years. If we actually went all out to produce these resources we could be a oil exporter in a few decades. By the way, Shale oil can be recovered with present technology with little environmental impact and produce gasoline for less than $2 a gallon but since it is on federal land congress has put it off limits for energy development.

So frankly the energy shortage has more to do with politics than anything else. When you have two trillion barrels of oil in reserve and 1/4 of the coal deposits on earth you do not have a energy shortage unless certain people want you to have an energy shortage.

American Thinker: The Myth of No Oil

Predictions of nationwide oil supply exhaustion soon became regular occurrences, with seven made prior to 1950[2], even though the United States was the world’s largest crude oil producer until 1973. Indeed, through the mid-1980’s, most oil consumed in the country was of domestic origin. Today, however, the United States imports the majority of its oil and, due to environmental regulations, has not authorized the construction of new refineries since the mid-1970s.

Yet, our country does not lack adequate oil resources. Rather, supply estimate methodologies seriously undercount our true oil resources. This and our lack of political will to use advanced recovery technologies contribute to the myth of no oil. This myth hobbles our ability to draw on our own existing resources and keeps us in a dependent posture, looking to others to provide for us.

A potentially significant supply of oil is trapped in shale in the American West. Rocks in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming alone are believed to contain over 1,500 billion barrels of oil. Previous government experiments with shale oil production were labor and energy intensive and environmentally disruptive, producing little oil. But efforts by private companies have revolutionized the extraction technology with development of an in situ process of heating rocks, trapping oil and extracting it profitably at oil prices of just over $30 a barrel. Shell Oil, the leader in this new technology, estimates that it will be able to produce one million barrels of oil per acre.

Meanwhile, it is estimated that oil production from tar sands in Canada and South America would add an additional 600 billion barrels to the world’s supply.[5] Canada, which does not segregate conventional oil from tar sands, is currently the largest U.S. oil supplier with about half of Canadian crude derived from oil sands. This oil is forecast to reach 3 million barrels per day in 2015. The Economist[6] recently noted that there exist “174 billion barrels of proven reserves in the oil sands of Alberta” alone.

Another technology, coal liquefaction to produce oil, becomes competitive when the price of conventional oil is higher than $30 per barrel, according to U.S. Energy Department estimates. The coal-to-oil process produces natural gas and removes pollutants that are released when coal is burned to produce electricity. With the United States possessing 27% of the world’s coal supply, U.S. coal-to-oil production could be substantial. South Africa has been producing petrol and diesel from coal since 1955 and currently produces 40% of the country’s oil from this source.

Full article