Ever since the first Arab oil embargo in 1973, we’ve heard a line of reasoning that goes something like this: The United States is running out of oil and natural gas. We need to import ever-increasing quantities of oil from other countries, many of which hate us. That means we are slowly enriching our enemies. We’re doomed.

But that line of reasoning is about out of gas. One of the most underreported and underappreciated stories of recent years is the comeback of American oil and gas production. Offshore oil finds have been more bountiful than expected, but, as oil expert Daniel Yergin wrote last month in the Wall Street Journal: “The big surprise is onshore, where the United States is experiencing an oil boom.”

U.S. petroleum imports, on a net basis, hit a peak of 60 percent of domestic consumption in 2005, he wrote. Now, they’ve dwindled to 46 percent.

Natural gas is even more dramatic. Not long ago, we were figuring how to import large volumes of it. (Remember the spate of LGN terminals proposed around Los Angeles five years ago?) Since then, as one gas company exec put it, we’ve discovered a couple of Saudi Arabias worth of gas right under our feet. Now, we’re talking about how America has a 100-year supply of the stuff.

Why this turnaround? It’s because of today’s improved extraction technologies, mainly hydraulic fracturing or fracking.

As you can read in the article on page 1 of this issue, Occidental Petroleum Corp., Los Angeles County’s biggest public company, is relying more on fracking, particularly in the fields of Kern County north of Los Angeles. But the practice is being challenged by environmentalists.

Trouble is, if the environmentalists had their way, fracking would come to a complete stop, here and everywhere, forever and ever. End of story.

Yes, it’s important to ensure that oil and gas is being produced in an environmentally sound way. Of course, no one wants tainted water supplies. But it’s simply not reasonable to ban fracking. There’s got to be a rational compromise here.

After all, enriching countries that hate us can be even more hazardous to our health.

• • •

California’s effort to build a high-speed train isn’t dead yet. But it is breathing hard. Last week’s withering report from a state panel, which could not recommend going forward with the train because it was “not financially feasible,” was the latest sign that the whole idea is on life support. And voters today would pull the plug if given the chance, at least according to a Field Poll last month that said two-thirds of Californians are now against it.

(Full disclosure: The Business Journal’s publisher, Matt Toledo, was a board member of the California High-Speed Rail Authority until his term expired at the end of last month.)

Looking back, the biggest PR blunder was the decision to build the first segment of rail in the Central Valley. That may have made sense on some level at the time. It likely was a strategy to poke balky Los Angeles and San Francisco, which hadn’t gotten their acts together regarding high-speed rail. A stretch of high-speed rail in the middle of the state would have incentivized the two cities to be first to build out to it.

Instead, the Central Valley proposal quickly invited jokes about a bullet train to nowhere. And as the cost estimates for the train tripled, it slowly dawned on people that the train’s build-out may be much slower than promised. And that means the Central Valley segment, if built, may sit lonely and conspicuously useless for years. Californians, rightly, don’t want that embarrassment.

Here’s a simple idea: The rail authority should do the opposite. Assuming the high-speed rail doesn’t get scuttled entirely, the authority should forget the Central Valley stretch and instead try to find cost-effective ways to put high-speed rail along existing rights-of-way from San Diego to Orange County to Los Angeles and maybe beyond to Burbank and Santa Clarita. The Bay Area could do the same with a San Francisco to San Jose to Sacramento configuration.

Leave it to the next generation to link the two big cities by building through the Central Valley.

Charles Crumpley is editor of the Business Journal. He can be reached at [email protected].