> If there stopped being from the outside competition for the oil, wouldn’t that roughly balance out stopping the supply of oil from the outside?

In the short run, yes. In the long run you’d fuck up the economies of scale and profit incentives.

I think whether the economies of scale and profit incentives get fucked up depends on the size of the before and after markets we are talking about.

For these to collapse, I believe we would need the international market for US oil specifically to be substantially larger than the entire domestic market for any oil. Is that true?

> we would need the international market for US oil specifically to be substantially larger than the entire domestic market for any oil

You just need U.S. producers to be insulated from international competition.