Secondly, one take on the Iraq war was that it happened not to obtain fossil fuel resources, but rather to obtain control over them, and prevent them being exploited in a way which threatened the interests of US and/or Saudi oil.
“Cheap” in quotes because anyone who thinks it is cheap is not accounting for some significant hidden costs.
The tragedy of the commons applies here. If you are not familiar with that, it’s worth looking up. I’ll assume you are.
Government can have a role in mitigating the tragedy of the commons by having the industry pay for the problems they create.
Or government can look the other way, which is a defacto subsidy.
We didn’t used to be a net exporter. Part of the reason fracking even got the traction it has now is that government was alarmed by how much money they were paying for the oil wars, and got desperate for any way to stop the bleeding.
There are only a hand full of temporary cases of local well water contamination with benzene.