My dad dabbled in oil and gas leases and said the reason we slowed our production/consumption of our own oil/gas after WWII was because of the belief that one reason we were able to defeat Hitler was his troops ran out of fuel at critical times and we were able to get it. My dad said the idea was to save our resources and use other countries resources so in time of war we would not need outside sources. It sounds like a good idea- but then like everything else we ended up dependent on other countries anyway because of environmental whackos and now we don’t have enough refineries...so here we are.
I grew up in the SW, and most of the male adults on my mother’s side worked in the oil industry.
When I started college in the mid 1950’s, I had intended to become a geologist and work for one of those companies.
In college, what I heard in the basic geology courses was there was no new oil fields in America and few in the rest of the world. We would probably be wasting our time becoming geologists.
Then in the basic science course we were brain washed that all oil came from dinosaurs and other life forms and the supply of that was rapidly disappearing. That apparently had the same hard science as Gorebal Warming.
Coming from a non rich family, I opted out of being a geologist.
50 years later we are still finding new oil supplies/potential in America, the Gulf of Mexico, Canada and Alaska.
For at least 4 decades the liberals when they controlled congress and the executive office have enacted all types of bs legal barriers to prevent us from discovering and drilling for oil in America, the Gulf of Mexico, Canada and Alaska. They have limited pipelines and construction of new refineries for decades.
In the meantime the Opecker Princes have grown richer and richer. We have been involved in two+ hot wars to protect oil from so called friendlies in the Middle East.