Oil production is a slave to prices. The majority of oil worldwide is quite expensive to extract - shale in the US, oil sands in Canada/Venezuela, etc. And so l

Oil production is a slave to prices. The majority of oil worldwide is quite expensive to extract - shale in the US, oil sands in Canada/Venezuela, etc. And so low prices reduce our ability to produce oil which, in turn, sends prices up. And vice versa, high prices enable even the junkiest reserves to be extracted which sends prices down. And the more you produce, the more expensive it becomes to produce - the reason for this is that you're always going to pick the low hanging fruit first, but as you run out of that you're left picking higher and higher up the tree. And while we are the world's largest producer of oil, we're also the world's 2nd largest importer of oil as well!