April 21, 2026 [ Realclearenergy ]- Something remarkable happened in American energy last year. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the U.S. produced a record 13.6 million barrels of crude oil per day in 2025 – more than any other nation on Earth, and more than at any point in our history. Natural gas output reached nearly 109 billion cubic feet per day. By every measure of raw production, we are the dominant nergy power in the world.
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And yet, here we are in April 2026, watching oil prices remain elevated, watching allies scramble for supply, and watching the global economy absorb the impact of ongoing instability in key global shipping routes. How is that possible
Part of the answer, as API President Mike Sommers recently pointed out, is infrastructure and permitting. The Marcellus Shale – one of the most productive natural gas formations on the planet – sits 100 miles from New York City, and yet communities across the Northeast still cannot reliably access that gas when demand spikes, because we haven’t built the pipelines to connect supply to need. He’s right, and Washington should act.
But there is a second gap in this debate that rarely gets named: even where infrastructure exists, the energy industry’s supply chain – the equipment, materials, valves, pipe, fittings, and instrumentation that make production physically possible – is stretched dangerously thin. As recent weeks have reinforced, in a world of record demand and geopolitical volatility, that gap may matter more than we think.
We have solved for production. The next challenge is execution – getting the right equipment, from reliable sources, to the right place on time.
I’ve worked in oilfield supply for more than two decades, first as a salesman out of Erie, Pennsylvania, and now through Liberty Tools and Vorex, distributing products from more than 40 North American and European manufacturers to customers across 15 countries. The single most common cause of project delays I’ve witnessed is not geological complexity, not permitting, and not financing. It’s the inability to source critical equipment on time from a reliable supplier.
A valve that should arrive in eight weeks comes in twenty. A specialized fitting is backordered because the one domestic supplier is sold out, and the import lead time, under current tariff uncertainty, is unpredictable. These failures rarely make headlines – but they compound. And in a market where every barrel counts, compounding matters.
The data confirms what operators know from experience. According to BloombergNEF, lead times for new combined-cycle gas power plants jumped to five years in 2025, up from three-and-a-half years in 2023 – a 43% increase – while costs surged 49% over the same period. Consulting firm Credendo noted that in 2026, ‘most operators are constrained by project cycle times, equipment shortages and limited transportation options.’
Washington is debating permitting reform and pipeline construction. Both matter. But even the most permissive regulatory environment cannot solve an eight-week lead time for a critical component from an overseas manufacturer.
The solution is not protectionism. It’s intentionality. Operators and procurement teams can act now without waiting for Washington: audit critical path components early and begin procurement before they become urgent; qualify multiple suppliers across geographies so a disruption in one market doesn’t stop a project; build relationships with distributors who specialize in hard-to-find materials.
The longer-term picture sharpens the urgency. The EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook 2026 projects that U.S. natural gas production will grow from 107 to as much as 151 billion cubic feet per day by 2050, and that total electricity generation capacity will need to increase between 50% and 90% to meet rising demand. That is a multi-decade buildout at a scale this country hasn’t attempted since the mid-twentieth century. It will require enormous, sustained quantities of the components and materials that make energy infrastructure work.
America has the resources. We have the production capacity. What we need now is the supply chain discipline to match our ambition with the execution capability to deliver on it.
We built the wells. Now we have to build everything else.
