More then a little touch of irony

Seems BRT was right regarding the false premise of the US being the biggest oil producer in the world in lieu of the Saudi Arabian gambit of crashing oil prices in order to crush Russia & Iran (Syria anyone?) but we already knew that, right? 

With one quick drop in the price of oil, the shale oil boom is officially bust. In less than a week, 61 oil rigs across the United States closed up shop, according to the most recent rig count from Baker Hughes. The U.S. has 1,750 oil rigs still hunting for new oil wells, but that number is expected to fall by another 400 rigs by the time spring rolls around.

The whole episode is a wake-up call about just how much of a fairy tale North America’s oil boom really was. It was a fairy tale with real drills, sure — and since it was exempt from the Clean Air and Clean Water acts, it will continue to have real consequences for the people living near it. But when it costs Saudi Arabia $10 to get a barrel of oil and it costs shale oil operations around $65 to make that same barrel, it should have been obvious that America was only a titan of oil production because another country was letting us be.

Additionally ...

All of which means that TransCanada may well find itself delighted that protesters stopped it from building a big, expensive pipeline to get now-unprofitable tar-sands oil to market. I wouldn’t count on that one, though.

Maybe pigs can fly after all. :)