So...it's a pretty big deal.
Three years is a blink in time.
If it was fifty years or more you would at least have a case.
I just said it was a "big" deal. And it is. $1 trillion dollars. At least as newsworthy as most HN headlines.
This doesn't even touch on what an environmental time bomb this is.
Wolfcamp shale is in west Texas (see my link in this thread). It seems more likely to me over the next few years that west Texas sees a boom than Arctic drilling sees intense interest.
Instead, optimistically, you're looking at this supplying 0.5% of the US energy needs over a span of 20-30 years at best.
To put that in perspective: You could shave 0.5% off of the US energy needs by pushing for more electric vehicles. Then you wouldn't even need this oil.
Did you miss a decimal point? You think that only 3% of the oil is extractable over the next 20 years?
If you are talking about Alpine High, it's less than 1/2 a year of US consumption of oil and less than 3 years of US consumption of natural gas at current rates (and very likely less depending on the recovery ratio).