You guys are celebrating over cheap gas, but you know what, THINK ABOUT THIS!
You know what cheap oil prices do? They bankrupt and drive the little oil producers out of buisness! Your 1-3 barrel a day wells just cannot profit at low prices, this last "oil boom" we have seen has rejuvenated exploration and production in the Illinois Basin.
I agree with a fair price, but if a barrel of oil gets too cheap(like when it went down to ten bucks a barrel) it shuts down the small operations. When oil prices crashed in the mid-1980s and late 1990s, this time sending the price of a barrel below what it took to produce it, the domestic oil industry suffered and many small independent producers were squeezed out. Since 1989, the amount of crude retrieved state-wide in Illinois has dropped by half to about 11 mm barrels a year -- less than 1 % of the total produced nationwide -- because the large price declines in the last two decades pushed people out of the business.
I've grown weary of the stereotype that his line of work is crowded with gusher-finding Jed Clampetts or "BIG OIL" with "obsene profits".
Small independents do one thing and try to do it well enough to make a living, feed their families, raise their children and set themselves up to retire someday. This is kind of the last bastion of free enterprise -- go out and risk things to maybe be a big winner.
Cheap oil might be good for the masses at the gas pump, but cheap oil is NOT good for the Small independents, all cheap oil does is shut down further domestic production, and allow large corporations and groups like OPEC to gimmick the market.