Oh Well!!! "Drill Baby Drill" Won't Happen, Because Oil Companies Manage For Profitability, Not Quantity

[OKIsItJustMe]

6. Fracking is not new, it is newly profitable

We’ve known about oil and gas in shale formations for several decades, “conventional” drilling could produce oil and gas elsewhere for less, and so “unconventional” drilling was not done. (Why would it?)

We’ve known about “tar sands” for decades, the oil companies didn’t touch it, because (like fracking) it wasn’t profitable enough to warrant it.

Fast forward to oil selling at $100/barrel, and that “unconventional oil” starts looking tempting. So, “Drill baby drill,” and we got a glut! Prices went down, and so did profits, the early days of COVID-19, with fewer people driving, was the nail in the coffin for many of them. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=fracking+bankrupt