What? By 2016, US companies had extracted so damn much oil from shale that they could finally convince the government that letting them export some wouldn't jeo

What? By 2016, US companies had extracted so damn much oil from shale that they could finally convince the government that letting them export some wouldn't jeopardize the US's energy security. And this is two years after global oil prices plummeted, in 2014, causing trouble for Russia but really causing trouble for Venezuela. > you can arrange the world such that they want to on their own The US government didn't arrange for the oil to be in the shale. I don't know if it funded research into cheaper extraction from shale or if the companies figured that out on their own but even if they did, there are much better reasons to do so than hoping to screw with Russia at some point in the future.