Piping in from Alberta, Canada. Minor correction, the deposits Zeev is talking about are "oilsands" not shale. In fact, there is more oil in Canadian oilsands than there is in Saudi Arabia. The problem is cost. It costs about $17 per barrel to extract the oil from the oilsands whereas it costs about $2 per barrel to get it out of the ground in Saudi Arabia. So, as Zeev pointed out it is pure ecomomics. Western economies, especially the USA, run on cheap oil. They would rather go to war in the middle east than help develop safe Canadian oil. (Fewer SUV's also might help.) I wonder how close to $17 per barrel we would get by adding the cost of war to the $2 Saudi Oil. Never mind the cost of human suffering and loss of life. We live in a perverse world.
Ormsby