Now we have been able to obtain additional sources of crude oil to fuel our economy for the foreseeable future. From the BBC.
The receding threat from 'peak oil'
Concerns about oil supplies running dry are receding, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Massive new discoveries in the US have led to a "dramatic" change in global prospects.
The IEA's head of oil markets, Antoine Halff, says forecasts have had to be repeatedly revised upwards in the past two years.
Declining US production has been reversed as oil extracted from shale and other new sources comes on stream.
Mr Halff told BBC News that concerns about an approaching "peak" in oil production have been "moved to the back burner".
"Just a few years ago, everybody thought US production was in permanent decline, that the nation had to face the prospect of continuously rising imports - and now the country is moving towards self-sufficiency," he explained.
"In the last few years, many forecasters have had to revise their forecasts upwards continuously - sometimes the ink was not dry on the previous forecasts before they had to raise their outlooks again."
Developments in major new fields in Texas and North Dakota are behind the change in US oil fortunes, with the so-called Monterey shale beneath California also in prospect.
There's enough oil in this country for another 100 years with our present technology”
According to one IEA estimate, the US may be on course to produce as much oil as Saudi Arabia by 2020, and possibly as soon as 2017....
...According to one independent oil producer, Fred Holmes of Holmes Western, the key factor is a high price for oil, making it worthwhile to continue exploiting existing fields and explore new ones.
"There's still plenty of oil - we just haven't got all of it out of the ground yet. There's not a real danger of there being no fossil fuel… the oil is still valuable and it's not easy to get," he told BBC News.
"There's enough oil in this country for another 100 years with our present technology and there's more around the world to be found yet."
Sounds like good news for the country. Now one point to make is if it was up to B Hussein Obama et all we would not have this new supply.
Now with such good news, you know some people would not stand for it.
The prospect of a new oil rush has angered environmental campaigners, who argue that the focus should remain on a transition away from fossil fuels.
Kassie Siegel of the Centre for Biological Diversity said that "a rapid shift to clean energy" was needed to help tackle climate change, and that the mere existence of new oil resources did not mean that they had to be extracted and burned.
She told BBC News: "We need to win the battle against this big new oil boom in California - and we have to win it in California, where we pride ourselves on being a leader in responding to the climate crisis. Because if we can't win in California, where in the US can we win it?
"We're faced with a choice about what we're going to do with all this new oil - and we cannot burn this oil without lighting the fuse on a carbon bomb which would shatter our state's efforts to deal with greenhouse gas emissions."
Tom Frantz, an almond farmer and campaigner, has kept watch on the first fracking operations in the area of Shafter, near Bakersfield in California, as oil companies start exploring the potential of the Monterey shale.
"This is the tip of the iceberg with 70 wells," he told BBC News. "There could be 500 wells in the same area in three years if it's economical and this could extend north.
"Everybody in the path of this thing could be run over in a tidal wave of oil drilling and fracking and hazardous emissions."...
Five hundred wells? Man, in spite of the best efforts of the idiots like Jerry Brown their might be hope for the economy of California. And of America. We could have an economic renaissance if it were not for people with their boot's on the neck of our industry. Hopefully we see them gone from power soon enough.
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