The KOCH/ GOP Energy Future should scrare the crap out of us. (Interesting - Big Oil is solidly in Charge of Politics now.)

http://www.alternet.org/environment/why-gops-vision-north-americas-energy-future-should-scare-all-us?akid=12790.294211.RFCfAi&rd=1&src=newsletter1031810&t=10

Brace yourself. This combination of fossil fuel optimization and North American solidarity against a potentially hostile world is destined to become the core of the Republican economic and national security platforms in the 2016 presidential election.  It will similarly govern action in Congress over the next two years.  So, if you want to understand the dynamics of contemporary American politics, it’s crucial to grasp the new Republican vision of an energy-saturated North America.
Exxon’s Neo-Imperial Vision
Republican-style North Americanism is, in fact, an amalgam of two intersecting urges.  The first of them involves a quest by U.S.-based giant oil companies to gain greater access to the oil and natural gas reserves of Canada and Mexico; the second, a drive by neoconservatives and national security hawks in Washington to rev up Cold War 2.0, while stepping up combat with both Iran and the Islamic State.
Let’s start with the altered world energy order once dominated by privately owned giants like BP, Chevron, and ExxonMobil -- a.k.a. the international oil companies, or IOCs.  For most of the twentieth century, these companies controlled a majority of the world’s oil and gas reserves and so almost completely dominated the global trade in hydrocarbons.  In the 1970s and 1980s, however, many of their overseas assets were systematically appropriated by governments in oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia, Algeria, and Venezuela, and placed under the control of state-owned, national oil companies, or NOCs.  In response, the IOCs sought to increase their production from reserves in Canada and the U.S., as well as in Mexico, which has its own state-owned oil company but was facing declining output.  This led those big companies to believe that, in the long run, Mexico would be forced to open its doors to greater foreign involvement.
Their strategy proved widely successful in the U.S., where the application of new technologies, including hydro-fracking, horizontal drilling, and deepwater drilling, has led to spectacular increases in oil and gas output.  According to the Energy Information Administration of the Department of Energy, U.S. field production of crude oil jumped from five million barrels per day in 2008 to 8.6 million barrels in the third quarter of 2014.  Over the same period, the production of natural gas similarly rose from 21.1 to 25.7 trillion cubic feet.  The current plunge in oil prices is expected to slow the pace of U.S. drilling, but not prevent further gains.