Anyone who doubts that the deployment of the technologies we have come to call fracking constitutes a revolution should consider this. U.S. oil production has soared by 70 percent in the past six years. American refineries have cut in half their imports from the OPEC cartel, setting off a scramble by those countries to find new markets. Nigeria, once among our top-five suppliers, no longer exports to us a single barrel of its light, low-sulfur oil — the type produced by fracking. Thanks to a bit of definitional legerdemain that gets partially around an old anti-export law passed when we were deemed excessively dependent on foreign oil, we are set to become a major exporter. Our crude exports are at their highest level since the 1950s, and when, as seems likely, the remaining ban on exports is removed, will rise sharply. Shipments of just the type of crude European refineries need will head there, more Alaskan oil will be shipped to Asia, and global competition will become more intense. RIP theories of “Peak Oil.”

The ripple effects of the glut-induced drop in oil prices to levels not seen since December 2012 are only now beginning to be felt.