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Necessary, reliable, and future-proof.

Fact is, as countries develop they consume more energy, the cost of deep underground / submarine installations goes up, and they’re tapping a finite resource so supply and demand affects the price massively.

That’s why the coal mines in Britain were closed down in the 80s. Getting energy from French nuclear and imported coal was already cheaper than kowtowing to unions to keep the mines open and that’s without the billions that would’ve been needed to improve the facilities.

But that means the cheapest supplies mostly come from developing, poor, or corrupt countries. If they’re not corrupt then the rising tide lifts all boats, and you can kick the van down the road for 25 more years before their rising prosperity and dwindling yields drive their costs up.

But if not...

Russia is comprised of multiple poor if not
third world regions with a corrupt authoritarian state in the one part of it that’s vaguely modernized.

Venezuela isn’t any better.

Saudi Arabia is effectively what Russia would be like if all its mineral wealth was in the vicinity of its biggest cities.

As Europe is now finding out to its cost, ditching one very unreliable autocratic state for another doesn’t actually make the long term problem go away.

America is obsessed with corruption right now. The Bidens for example. But in 50 years if America is still kicking the can down the road and playing Realpolitik with fossil energy suppliers it won’t be able to guarantee its energy WITHOUT political corruption.

Either you take a leaf out of the commie playbook and make it affordable to dig out your own resources with raw manpower, or your guaranteed domestic fossil fuel resources become unaffordable to dig up. Maybe instead you go for renewable energy + new nuclear, and invest heavily in unmanned mining/ processing to keep the domestic gas & coal costs low.