The U.S. hydrocarbons industry is poised to boom the way the Internet sector did in the 1990s, though regulations are preventing the sector from taking off, said former General Electric boss Jack Welch.

“We have a chance in this country to make this the American century. This gas thing is huge,” Welch told CNBC.

“The gas and oil that we have found is in the first inning. It’s like the Internet in 1990. We’re in the first inning of a great American century. Unless we get whacked,” by regulations.

Editor's Note: The Final Turning Predicted for America. See Proof.

States that are allowing for drilling will outpace those that remain mired in regulations and paperwork.

For example, Welch said, “Pennsylvania is drilling. West Virginia is drilling. New York State is having another study.”

“The regulatory wall is a huge deal. It’s equal in my opinion to what happens in my marketplace as the fiscal cliff,” Welch said.

At the end of the year, the Bush-era tax cuts and other tax breaks are set to expire at the same time automatic cuts to government spending kick in, a combination known as a fiscal cliff that could send the country falling into a recession if left unchecked by Congress.

Energy industry executives have criticized President Barack Obama for not doing more to encourage more drilling for oil and natural gas within the United States, as new technology could allow the country to become a major energy exporter.

Transportation concerns could run on natural gas, which would benefit the economy much more than encouraging the use of wind or solar power generation.

“North America is the fastest-growing oil and gas producing region in the world, providing us with an opportunity to achieve freedom from OPEC that could not have been imagined 10 years ago,” billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens wrote in a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Op-Ed endorsing Mitt Romney for president.

“North American energy independence is within our grasp and yet the president’s policies have jeopardized our ability to achieve it.”

Editor's Note: The Final Turning Predicted for America. See Proof.