Yea, I’m sure we’ll never live long enough to see it become practical.
The main reason I’d like to see it happen is that all the oil in the Middle East would instantly be worth about a tenth as much as it is now. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving group of maniacs.
The best thing that could happen would be to take those oil wells off line. We have plenty of domestic energy available, but the problem is the expense related to obtaining it versus just pumping like they do in the Middle East.
The thing the Greenies don’t understand is, if you pay more than your global competitor for energy, you eventually can no longer compete. If we are all paying more, then that does not become an issue. This is why all the subsidized renewable forms of energy (solar, wind etc) are a dead end until the cost for easy to obtain energy goes up.
If our economy needs cheap middle eastern oil to continue to thrive, then we have a problem. The situation is not sustainable. Combine that with the ineptitude demonstrated by one of the major oil companies in the Gulf (basically not only severely damaging an important econmy but also making continued drilling of that oil less feasible), then I am not sure where we go from here.