1. Average gas prices plunge 14 cents over past 2 weeks
2. President’s oil tax would tank the U.S.
3. President’s oil tax takes away from freedom

In yet another blow to the Peak Oil theory, a new survey shows that Texas is even richer in natural gas than previously believed. Natural gas – cleaner than coal and very adaptable to other uses – is abundant and available.

Peak Oil, you’ll recall, is the theory driving much of the Obama administration’s energy policy. We’ll soon run out of fossil fuels, we are told, so we’d better spend a lot of money developing alternatives. When we’re pumping all the oil and natural gas we can find – that’s the theory’s “peak” – prices will start to skyrocket and nations could soon find themselves at war over diminishing resources.

But history has a way of undermining that theory.

“North Texas’ Barnett Shale – one of the country’s largest natural gas fields and the birthplace of modern fracking – holds even more reachable gas than previously thought, the federal government says,” the Texas Tribune reports. “The U.S Geological Survey says the 25-county region holds an average volume of about 53 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to its updated assessment released Thursday. That’s nearly twice as much gas as the agency estimated in 2003, before a mad dash of drillers transformed the landscape in North Texas.”

Petroleum is so abundant nowadays that oil and gas prices are threatening the viability of some smaller producers. That’s the very opposite of what we’re told should be happening.

Here’s what Peak Oil theorist Richard Heinberg wrote in 2004: “If the U.S. continues with its current policies, the next decades will be marked by war, economic collapse and environmental catastrophe. Resource depletion and population pressures are about to catch up with us, and no one is prepared. The political elites, especially in the U.S., are incapable of dealing with the situation and have in mind a punishing game of ‘Last One Standing.'”

More than a decade on, these predictions have failed to materialize. We have war, but it’s ideologically driven, not resource-driven. The population pressure many nations are feeling now is a lack of new babies.

What’s more, Peak Oil theorists entirely failed to factor in technological innovation in energy efficiency.

“Contained in Exxon’s new Outlook for Energy report is the following damning statistic: Electricity generation will grow by 90 percent by 2040, but the amount of fuel needed to generate that electricity will only have to grow by 50 percent,” the magazine Business Insider reported recently. “And the projected increase in energy demand is 20 percent less than the demand increase seen from 1980 to 2010. The IEA has previously projected that electricity will become more affordable over time in most regions as income levels increase faster than household electricity bills.”

As Ted Pirog, an energy analyst with Exxon, points out, “Our greatest source of energy in the future is our ability to use it more efficiently.”

What all this means is that Peak Oil is a discredited theory. Remember that when President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry trot out variations of the Peak Oil doomsday scenario to scare Americans into supporting their policies.