Cartoon Of the Week

For a very long time America was energy independent; we were prudent about how we developed our hydrocarbon resources and conservative in their use. Cheap, abundant crude oil allowed the United States to become the greatest economic powerhouse in the world; we fought and won wars with the stuff, our stuff, to keep us all safe and free.

Mama Nature always gets Her way, however, and the cheap, easy oil is gone now. Our producing basins are depleted and we're down to squeezing oil out of resource rock. Its expensive and not profitable for private enterprise to undertake. Unconventional shale oil has NEVER made money, yet we are still drilling the stuff, getting deeper and deeper in debt and depleting that resource rock like there is no tomorrow...exporting oil to foreign countries at a financial loss, while flaring its associated gas.

But there is a tomorrow and when shale oil is gone, that is all she wrote.

Hope is not a plan.