We only produce enough oil to meet our needs via fracked shale wells, enhanced recovery methods, etc, all of which comes at great cost, both financial and envir

We only produce enough oil to meet our needs via fracked shale wells, enhanced recovery methods, etc, all of which comes at great cost, both financial and environmental. I wouldn't expect an economist or an American Jingoist cheerleader to ever crack a geophysics book, but someone should look at the production decline curves of these wells and then take a wild-ass guess how much longer the shale miracle will last. We import oil because "energy independence" (at least from an oil & gas perspective, renewables and coal may be another matter) is a fleeting, rose-colored dream, from which we will soon awake.