You stand stunned in the middle of the living room, shaking with excitement, good excitement, as slips of paper fall from your hand to the floor.  Five slips of paper, to be exact.  Which reminds you that you seem to have lost control of your hand — which has gone numb — which is why the papers are falling to the floor.

They are checks from your late Uncle Harry’s estate.

Your mind reels in a series of jumbled chaotic thoughts as you try to grasp how this changes your life – totally.  How just the other night you glumly stared at your $77,000 net worth on the computer screen.  How you thought, what a pittance for a lifetime of hard work.  And how you realized you would never be able to retire — that you would have to work until you dropped dead.

Your eyes try to focus on the first slip of paper on the floor.

It’s a check.

A check for $206,133.  Made out to you.  From Uncle Harry’s estate.

And your mind jerks you back to the few times you met him.  Like that family Thanksgiving many years ago when he was smoking a pleasant smelling pipe, and laughing as relatives told him to give it up.  You recall him saying, with an amused smile and a chuckle, that he’d outlived three doctors who had told him the same.

Yes, Uncle Harry was a bit eccentric.  And he often bored everyone with talk about stock investments in oil, so they all ignored him.  Except you.  You thought he was interesting.  And he always seemed to have a wise, generous and kindly aura about him.

And proof of your intuition now lies on the floor.  Uncle Harry has outdone himself this time, you muse.  Because, lying on your floor, which you still can’t believe, is yet another check for $206,133.  And another check for $203,133.  And yet another.  And one more check for $360,733.

All made out to you.

You stumble over to your computer and add up the amounts.  My God!  Uncle Harry has left you with $1,185,267.  Added to your net worth, you are now worth $1,262,567.

And that is a game changer.  Because retirement is suddenly in the picture.

Right now.

—–

So how did you like this little story?

I wrote it to illustrate what a game changer the American Industrial Renaissance is.  By that I mean all of the recent oil discoveries in the U.S.

The average household net worth in 2010 was just $77,300.  And the reserves of oil in the United States sat at 15 billion barrels.  Everyone thought it was a scene without a future, that we would run out of oil.  Just like in the story above – a scene without a future — just work until you dropped dead.

Then along came Uncle Harry’s checks – as well as major oil discoveries in the United States.  And the impact to our countries oil future is as dramatic as the impact of Uncle Harry’s checks.

Literally.

Because I used the U.S. barrels of oil increase to proportionately increase the person’s net worth in the story.

Now I’m not saying everyone is going to be getting checks from dear old Uncle Harry.  But it does bring home how significant the oil and energy picture has changed in America, doesn’t it?

In just the past two years.

Consider my earlier figure of 15 billion barrels of proven oil reserves in 2010 in the U.S.  And now with the new oil discoveries and extraction techniques in the five major shale plays of the United States we could have as much as 245 billion barrels of oil reserves. That’s over 16 times as much oil.

Now do you get the picture?  See how big this discovery really is?

It’s a game changer – just like my little story.

And all of this has just happened in the past two years.  So no wonder it’s estimated the U. S. will be the leading oil producer in the world as soon as four years from now.  Our Middle East oil dependence is already dropping; jobs are going begging in some of the new oil producing states like North Dakota; and we could well become a net oil exporter in the next few years.

That’s the good news for America – brought to you by the late departed Uncle Harry.

May he rest in peace.

Have a nice day – John