No one said it would take us to the next galaxy.

I just said it was a "big" deal. And it is. $1 trillion dollars. At least as newsworthy as most HN headlines.

If it is cheaper to extract than the Arctic oil, it's enough to shift investment for a period of years. This action only lasts for 5 years.

Pretty much any oil you can think of is cheaper to extract than arctic shale oil. That's an extremely dangerous environment to be operating in, and whatever you extract must be piped out, which incurs significant infrastructure costs as well.

This doesn't even touch on what an environmental time bomb this is.

Are we talking about the same thing?

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.

Three years is 75% of the next administration. Context is king.

Wrong. This is a three year supply presuming you could extract 100% of the energy needs of the US from this singular patch, which is patently impossible. There is no feasible way to extract it that quickly.

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.

"You could shave 0.5% of the US energy needs over a span of 20-30 years"

Did you miss a decimal point? You think that only 3% of the oil is extractable over the next 20 years?