![]() ![]() The project failed, but since then every president from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama has aimed for “energy independence.” (Donald Trump, with characteristic flair, modulated this to “energy dominance.”) If the U.S. In 1973, President Richard Nixon announced Project Independence, a campaign to wean America off foreign oil by 1980. The episode reveals the power-and problems-of a vision that has guided U.S. If they had been carrying Qatari gas, they would have gone all the same. In late December, European natural-gas prices stood at then-record highs. ![]() No, the tankers’ journey to Europe was choreographed by the same force that every year sends cardiologists to Florida: abundant and profligate demand. The freedom-loving people of Houston had not donated gas to their Lithuanian kin. The ships, after all, did not change course because the State Department had requisitioned the gas. Or … does it? Upon closer inspection, the fleet demonstrated not the raw power of American industry, but the inescapable supremacy of the market. ![]() (The institute, despite its scholastic name, is Washington’s leading lobbyist for the oil-and-gas industry.) “As in World War II and other crises, America has Europe’s back,” Mike Sommers, the chief executive of the American Petroleum Institute, wrote last week. Now, thanks to the U.S.-invented technology of hydrofracturing, or fracking, the country produces more gas than it can consume. As recently as the mid-2000s, energy companies fretted that the U.S. This represented more than a minor milestone in global energy history. supplied more natural gas to Europe than Russia did. On the days they pulled into port, the U.S. In December, in a ballet of global logistics, more than 30 tankers ferrying liquid natural gas from the United States to various destinations around the globe-Japan, Brazil, South Africa-canceled their trips and set a new course for the European Union. ![]()
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