Likewise I genuinely hope someday an ‘alternative’ will be practical enough to no longer be an ‘alternative’  no longer a subsidized drain, but a contributor to wealth and standards of living like oil has been,  we’ll see! 

Let’s hope your politician can allow drilling near shore…and that oil will continue to flow.
http://www.indexmundi.com/energy.aspx?country=us&product=oil&graph=production

While the rest of the world convert to renewable energy.

That’s an assumption that there are still plenty of oil “near” politician home…hmm

Other than the “not in my backyard” assumption and politician that are not greedy to extract more oil until other countries have exhausted their supply, we have to focus more on facts on peaked oil production of other countries.

Do research “Peak oil theory” and find out which countries no longer able to “produce” oil more than enough to for their own country consumption?

Indonesia is one of such countries used to be a oil exporter but peaked in their oil production (or should I say extraction) in 2004 I think and begin to slowly require to import oil for their own local consumption.

USA itself is oil exporter in the 70s, remember? Now it’s 2nd largest oil importer of the world when China over take USA as 1st oil importer.

Question is why the government or private organization limit oil extraction by imposing restriction to drill “cheaper & safer resources nearer to shore?”…

Now the debate is why other countries in the world are moving into deep sea drilling, oil shale & expensive to refine high sulphur crude oil & tar sands if there are really lot’s of cheap oil flowing in the world?

The key is ever growing demand in the world (depending on growth of human population) and slowing down of world oil supply. (Read Peak oil – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia )

Isn’t the main reason we resort to deep sea drilling, shale etc that we’re not allowed to access the cheaper, safer resources nearer shore? (where the politicians live!) who ultimately pays for a $20 Billion ‘fine’ or the highest corporate taxes in the world? we do at the pump. Seems backwards to me to restrict the main thing that has fueled progress over the last century.

 Maybe $20 is exaggerating- but in the long run, prices have not increased along with more advanced extraction- e.g. north sea, gulf etc, and there is no physical shortage of supply in the ground. I think as always the spike reflects political, not physical hurdles?

Another point, if oil price is $20 per barrel… Canada Tar Sands will be stopped digging as it’s too costly to produce, same as oil shale & deep sea drilling. That could mean a significant of the world oil supply will be gone due to cost factor…which means it’s almost impossible to go back to $20 per barrel.

Unless, the oil discovered must be high quality low sulphur high pressure land based oil fields that cost next to nothing to pump out as it’s flowing out by it’s own…and must have huge quantity reserve. 

There are reasons why people resort to costly deep sea drilling, sucking out oil from oil shale (rocks) and other unconventional way of pumping oil from existing oil fields like pumping fresh water and etc.

Why would Canada use natural gas to extract the oil from the tar sands? Is Natural gas free? Nope. 

Of course, I need to see your research to make further assumptions haha I haven’t been researching this for some time.

Do let me know if I’m wrong