And part of the reason is that almost every country and company sees itself in a unique position: as the future last producer of fossil fuels.
And part of the reason is that almost every country and company sees itself in a unique position: as the future last producer of fossil fuels.
Extraction isn’t free, but it’s cheap enough that we’ll see too much taken out of the ground if we depend purely on existing economics. Something like half the proved reserves of oil and gas have to be left in the ground for 2C
The other big one is politics. Since the US has become an oil export it has started to shut down other oil exporters. First of all Venezuela, which has the biggest oil reserves in the world and is producing nearly nothing right now. Iran is a long time trouble maker and sanctions have been restarted under Trump. Since the invasion of Ukraine Russia is under sanctions as well and Western oil companies shut down cooperation. Saudi Arabia has not gotten much support after its oil refinery has been attacked by Iran a few years ago, so we know the US is not terribly interested in securing those oil reserves.
As I said a lot of the good oil is in politically difficult countries. That is about half of the worlds supply. If something goes wrong the US is basically the only country able to secure those supplies militarily. However that would be expensive and it also benefits from high prices being an oil exporter itself. With EVs there is a workable alternative for a lot of Western oil consumption.