Remember “peak oil”? We were solemnly lectured that the world was running out of hydrocarbon energy sources, so we must immediately lower our standard of living and reduce energy consumption.  But as with all Malthusian predictions of shortage, that forecast failed to reckon with human ingenuity and the wonder of the price system stimulating new supply.  The sky-is-falling faction turned to equally fallacious predictions of global warming as a means to bludgeon others into reducing their standard of living (while the warriors like Robert Kennedy and President Obama keep their private jets).

Meanwhile, in the real world, energy supplies, in particular clean natural gas, continue to grow.  The latest good news comes for a country that could really use some good news.  CNN Money (hat tip: Clarice Feldman) reports:

In what could be the largest natural gas discovery in history, Italian energy company Eni says it has unearthed a "supergiant" gas field in the Mediterranean Sea covering about 40 square miles.

The gas field could hold a potential of 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Eni says that's the energy equivalent of about 5.5 billion barrels of oil. The company won't know the field's true size until it begins to develop it.

Found in the deep waters off the northern coast of Egypt, Eni claims the gas field to be the largest ever in the Mediterranean and possibly the world.

After Eni explores and begins to develop the field, the company estimates that it will be able to satisfy Egypt's natural gas demand for "decades."

Good news for Egypt and world energy supplies, and bad news for Iran, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and (in all honesty) North Dakota and Texas, among many others.