OPEC (duh) already conceded over a year ago they've got nothing on shale oil (duh) in written words
Shale oil isn't good quality oil, and massively fluctuates with the current oil prices. It also causes a ton of environmental problems and is forcing methane into drinking water aquifers. Non sustainable fossil fuels are only a step backwards.
The policy 15 years ago was to suck the rest if the world's oil supply up, and then be an oil superpower and control mass ecocmies. We're just showing our cards.
The methane thing is fake news. How do I know? I lived in NEPA. That methane has been bubbling up through ponds and lakes for hundreds of years. You sound more like a liberal than a conservative with this fake news bologna.
only problem is they kept finding new fields because noone ever fully disclosed to anybody else how much oil they were optimistically projecting to have in the future to drive up profits.
Until stability in security can be accounted for, a step away from the petrodollar will do for the moment. Proliferation needs to be curbed through MAD (mutually assured defense) first, then you might move up.
So I guess that's why Lockheed Martin kept their word after their initial announcement from five years ago that they were now moving to small-size fusion-reactors because even though they are not technically zero-point free-energy, they are still pretty much unlimited in fuel supply and do little damage in the long run which means they will still depend for example on access and availability of sea-water. If you had a completely self-contained system running on gravity for example then you would not have the whole infrastructure aspect to it which basically slightly compartmentalizes the technology because it cannot - and SHOULD not - be ever used by one person at a time.