RICK PERRY INTRODUCES THE THREE MUSKETEERS OF ENERGY:

Energy Secretary Rick Perry said Thursday that he is one of “Three Musketeers” of energy.

Perry, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt “are three individuals that do believe that the future of America is inextricably intertwined with the energy industry,” he said in opening an energy conference at his agency.

“Some call us the Three Musketeers for whatever reason that might be,” Perry added. . . .

Energy expert Daniel Yergin, vice chairman of IHS Markit, opened the first panel by saying the U.S. has moved away from the “age of vulnerability,” which is where it stood during the Mideast oil embargoes of the 1970s, to a new place of energy abundance, especially for natural gas production.

“We are not merely self-sufficient” with natural gas, Yergin said. “We are by far the world’s largest producer of natural gas and an increasingly important exporter.”

He said crude oil production also is surging, driven by the use of hydraulic fracturing and the shale energy boom of the last decade.

Talk of “energy” used to be boring and depressing, because we were losing. Now we’re winning and it seems much more interesting.