Victor Hanson writer for the NYPost: Despite its cool green parties and ambitious wind and solar agendas, Europe remains by far the world’s largest importer of oil and natural gas. Europe itself is naturally rich in fossil fuels. It likely has more reserves of shale gas than the United States, currently the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas. Yet in most European countries, horizontal drilling and fracking are either illegal or mired in protests and court challenges. The result: Europe is almost entirely dependent on Russian, Middle Eastern and African energy. Which is why the American-Iranian standoff, coupled with radical drop-offs in Iranian and Venezuelan oil production, has terrified Europe. It is hard to be both the world’s largest importer of gas and oil and the loudest critic of fossil fuels, but Europe has managed to do it.
