Unlimited exports of U.S. natural gas without restoring honest supply-and-demand-based markets worldwide will permit us to kiss goodbye to the jobs that would have been created, as gas prices will be pumped to artificially determined world levels, much to the glee of the 'oil patch.'

Whenever I bring up the importance of getting America the energy plan it deserves, someone always says, "Boone, let's not pick winners and losers. Let's let the market decide." There's only problem with that statement.

Are we helping to fund a future danger on our northern border, and will the revenues generated by the Keystone Pipeline help to create a condition deeply adversarial to our national security?

Energy, be it oil, natural gas or coal, involves core commodities to the functioning of our economic viability, and here the Department of Energy under Chu's tutelage has approached disaster.

This torrent of money flowing into OPEC, especially into the Persian Gulf States, raises the question how this massive windfall is being put to use other than providing fresh capital for the world's largest sovereign wealth funds, as those of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.

Yes, fracking has its problems. But within the few years, that technology has improved significantly, oversight has become singularly sensitized to the downside risks and communities have heightened awareness.

In our nation's Northeast, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas the 1970s oil crisis. Thanks to the back-to-back struggles of Hurricane San...

Perhaps we should take Mme. Lagarde's effusiveness before OPEC to heart and learn from her standards. If one of the world's most prestigious international institutions can render such homage to brazen price conspirators, we should act accordingly.

The U.S. should at long last recognize that in being the world's most important consumer of fossil fuels our market is as important to oil producers as they have been in supplying our needs.

So, where does Washington go from here? If it wants to preserve its increasingly tenuous foothold in a nation with the world's largest oil reserves, it might begin by engaging in some honest diplomacy.

After nearly four years in office, that the United States is even more dependent on Middle East oil is shocking testimony to the failure of the Obama Administration's energy policies.

Clearly, a disaster in the making. A disaster not only for food prices in the American market, but portending a food crisis worldwide. It is an act of nature that has unsheathed a fact of fundamental significance, but barely touched upon in either political nor civil discourse.

Oil prices were headed up, said Pickens, and then explained, well, the Saudis are maxed out. They can't produce more. And in one fell swoop, he gave the Saudis a free pass on the current oil price distortions and turned them from the OPEC cabal's malevolent gorgon into our heroic good guys.

* Few alternatives to Western ship insurance market * Asia govts mull sovereign guarantees for ship insurers * Chinese t...