While thousands of underwater basket-weavers, would-be creative writers, and scholars with degrees in ancient African culture sit around warming concrete, listening to orators rant on about why they deserve more money, less debt, and a higher quality of life simply because they live and breathe…
A real revolution is quietly taking hold across the nation.
No, I’m not talking about some sort of social reform or governmental upheaval.
I’m talking about the kind of thing that actually takes care of business, creates jobs, bolsters industry, increases quality of life, and even brings back the sort of prosperity we once thought was gone forever.
An acquaintance of mine, an attorney living and working in North Dakota, recently told me during a phone conversation, “If you’re able-bodied, can get your butt out here, and want a job… you’ve got a job.”
He’s not talking about some minimum-wage-paying type of slave labor scrubbing dishes or toilets…
He’s talking about work that pays close to a six-figure average in his hometown of Williston.
The unemployment rate there as of the end of last year was a stunning, almost surreal -2%.
Yes, ladies and gentleman… that’s a negative.
It means that there are more jobs than people. It means teenagers are being courted and even getting signing bonuses for jobs at Wendy’s and McDonald’s restaurants.
But that’s all old news.
Unless you’ve been living under the motionless rear end of an Occupy Wall Street protester, you probably already know at least something about the oil-shale boom going on in the Western United States and Canada.
What I want to tell you about today is the newest phase…
The next step in America’s steady return to the top of the global energy food chain centers not on crude oil, but on natural gas.
And it has the same technology to thank.
Hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, which have given a new lease on life to the North American oil production industry, are now doing the same number on natural gas.
Already number one in global production of natural gas (with Russia a close second), new technologies are boosting production levels even higher…
The state of Pennsylvania, for example, has multiplied its nat gas production sevenfold — from 500 million to 3.5 billion cubic feet per day in the last three years alone:
For a closer look at just how dramatic such an expansion looks, check out this interactive map.
But this industrial resurgence isn’t localized to a single spot on the map — or even unique to a single region.
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In Kansas and Ohio, the new age oil and gas boom has returned prosperity to areas that had all but given up on old American concepts like rapid upward mobility, free enterprise, and abundant work.
Recent discoveries in the Mississippian Limestone formation have boosted the state’s total well count by 1,200% in just the last year, with literally trillions of dollars in recoverable oil and gas resources just waiting to be tapped.
The practical result of this is a near-zero unemployment rate — with high school graduates earning an average that’s already surpassed $60k per year.
And the secondary economic impact of all this is even greater…
Today, in certain parts of Kansas, it’s nearly impossible to find a vacant hotel room.
The result is that real estate is once again on the rise — driven by aggressive, forward-thinking entrepreneurs who saw their industry hit the lowest of the low just four short years ago.
In Harper County, Kansas, rent has gone up 500% in the last year alone.
Workers have taken to parking their RVs and camping out in parking lots.
And guess what? They’re happy to be doing it.
This is still merely scratching the surface as far as the long-term effects of this boom go…
Major land-owners in these regions, namely the farmers (many of whom faced foreclosure between 2007 and 2009), are leveraging mineral rights to these oil and gas companies and making as much as $1,250 per acre, per year, plus royalties — turning simple, hardworking Americans into multi-millionaires.
Farmers now entering the rarefied 1%.
And the same thing is going on in Texas, the Carolinas, and all across the Midwest.
I wonder if that’s what the OWS horde has in mind as it stomps, kicks, and screams about unfairness.
Frankly, I don’t know anymore.
What I do know is that while thousands of professional complainers are busy tweeting, YouTubing, Facebooking, and otherwise broadcasting their version of a revolution, North America has come roaring back to the forefront of global energy production.
To your wealth,
Brian Hicks
Check us out on YouTube!Brian is a founding member and President of Angel Publishing. He writes about general investment strategies for Wealth Daily and Energy & Capital. For more on Brian, take a look at his editor’s page.
