The fracking euphoria had to end. For three reasons. First, the claims for its benefits were wildly exaggerated, ensuring eventual disappointment as even a cheerful reality could not meet the imaginings of the pro-fossil-fuel gang. Second, environmental groups were not going to sit idly by, their formidable political weapons holstered, while fossil fuels received a new lease on life in America. Third, as has always been the case, the oil and gas industry, abetted by the railroads that have to move the stuff in the absence of adequate pipeline infrastructure, were insufficiently attentive to some of the problems involved in the production and transportation of the enormous gas and oil reserves made available by the new application of what is an old technology.

Not that fracking has not brought huge benefits to American industry. The processes of drilling for and extracting the newly accessible reserves has created hundreds of thousands of jobs, both directly and indirectly—the latter in the industries that feed, house and service the oil field workers. The abundant supply of natural gas has kept prices so low that the harsh winter’s blow to the pocketbooks of customers of many U.S. utilities has been softened. Perhaps more important, relatively low-cost natural gas is attracting manufacturing industries to America from Germany, Chile and other countries, and positioning us to become a major player in the emerging globalised market for natural gas. And someday might even put the U.S. in a position to become such an important source of natural gas that countries now dependent on Putin’s Russia might find themselves with a bit more foreign policy independence and spine than they currently display.