I get a lot of criticism for suggesting the United States is on the threshold of crude oil and condensate scarcity. A whacko peak oil nut, I am called.

The key word is affordable crude oil and condensate. Profitable oil to find and produce. Indeed, we'll never run out of oil, that is a stupid concept used to deflect from reality. There are depleted oil fields in the country that would produce millions of barrels per day, in 4 BOPD increments. So what? We're not ever going to run out of oil.

The government does not "subsidize" companies to produce oil in America; that's liberal dung heap. We don't get checks in the mail to drill wells.

Private enterprise and capitalism in the U.S. are in charge of our hydrocarbon resources. It has to be profitable, this extraction, or it fails. I know that is difficult to understand given the seventeen years of the tight oil phenomena in the U.S. because it has not, as a resource play, made money yet. It was born and raised on debt, over $400 B of which has already been lost with another, likely, $300 B outstanding.

A lot of people think that is a big success story; I don't. Growth based on debt is artificial and therefore unstainable.

Exxon and Chevron are both heavily involved in American tight oil development. Combined they are $89 B in debt. Exxon had NO debt until it got in the shale business. GTS it. Paying more to shareholders than the net revenue they generate each year is NOT going to work in the long run and indeed, their respective debt balances increase year to year, back and forth.

AFEleaks.com suggests over 50% of net revenue (free cash flow) was returned to investors 1Q2026 from the independent tight oil sector. That isn't going to work either. A company cannot function on a full cycle basis, pay interest on debt, return dividends to investors, pay rents and for toilet paper, keep drilling one $15 MM well after another (M&A land costs, incld.) and pay down long term debt, much less set aside for billions of dollars of P,A & D liability down the road. Can't be done. Analysts that say they can, facing pressure depletion and declining drillable locations in all U.S Basins, are lying to you.

For the U.S. shale sector desperately in need of cash on hand to keep the drilling hamster wheel spinning, I don't believe in "net" debt. Debt is debt. At 5.75-6.5% interest rates debt is an anchor around a company's neck 24/7. This chart above is for 43 "selected producers;" total debt is actual way more than this across America for independents and integrated companies. Private debt? Lord who knows.

So, I've been in the oil business as an operator for a half century, spending my own money. I understand depletion and well economics. The debt the sector has already lost and this piece of debt above is never going to be paid back.

So, rail on me all you want, pretend corporate debt does not negatively affect YOUR financial future, that everything is good, America is hydrocarbon independent, dominating the rest of the world with cheap, abundant oil that will last 50 more years and that tight oil is affordable. Your dead wrong. You'll see...sooner than you think. The United States is going deeper in debt to provide the rest of the world with 5.6 MM BOPD of tight oil exports. Does that make sense to you?

Not to me it doesn't.