Legendary CEO Jack Welch: The next American boom has already started

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]."

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...
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