As I wrote last Thursday, the aftermath of the fiscal cliff deal requires some restructuring of energy sector holdings.

We are currently in a brief period between crises. Nothing was resolved in the eleventh (and a half) hour compromise.

The truth is there are still three huge fights on the horizon - revisiting the sequestration (automatic spending cuts) portion of the fiscal cliff, spending versus taxation in the budget, and raising the debt ceiling.

All will hit by early March.

So the reprieve gained on New Year's Eve will be brief.

The spike after the accord was huge. Unfortunately, as we witnessed late last week, the market rally has no legs. VIX (volatility) has been abnormally low, but that will be drifting up, to accelerate as we get closer to the next round of legislative paralysis.

We cannot predict how protracted this next round will be, but early indications are hardly encouraging.

That's why investors need to be more defensive and identify energy components that are more likely to withstand the gridlock and even profit from it.

Overall, you should divide the energy sector into four segments:

• Producers;
• Midstreams;
• Processors/Distributors; and,
• Alternatives.

You might have seen yesterday's headline in the Wall Street Journal: "U.S. Redraws World Oil Map."

As the article explains, U.S. oil production is now on pace to surpass Saudi Arabia by 2020. This would make the United States world's largest oil producer. We're already the second-largest natural gas producer, according to 2010 EIA estimates.

It's all thanks to the U.S. shale boom that has unlocked billions of barrels of oil and trillions of feet of natural gas from the Appalachian Mountains to the Pacific Coast, from the Bakken in North Dakota to the shale fields of southern Texas.

But all of this fracking has caused some serious economic and environmental problems.

And while I greatly advocate increased drilling and domestic production, we still must address a wide-range of problems now plaguing the shale oil and gas sectors.

After all - with apologies to Voltaire and Spiderman - with such great fortune comes greater responsibility.

That's why I am in the third day of what has become a very interesting conference here in Pittsburgh. It was convened to set the agenda moving forward to deal with the almost invisible aspects of shale oil and gas drilling.

In fact, for the first time, the conference's primary focus will be on the negatives caused by the drilling.

We also have questions surrounding the amount of water required to frack these formations (the process needs a lot of water to break open rock and release hydrocarbons), as well as the ongoing public health fears from the chemicals used.

Now, we are seeing parallel economic problems as well.

In the Marcellus basin, researchers are now recording some of these shortcomings and placing them in four basic categories.

The real concern is that these four problems - in infrastructure, labor, local inflation, and the environment - will remain well after the drilling (and the revenue) has moved on.

So before you decide to declare "energy independence", take a look at some of the downside that may come along with it.

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