Why is gas so cheap? Because Saudi Arabia is trying to kill off development of ND shale oil and Canadian tar sands oil, that's why

Normally when a oil glut occurs, Saudi Arabia tightens the spigots, but the country is now flooding the world with cheap petroleum, leaving money on the table.
     Why are the Saudis doing this? It wasn't hard for NBC to figure out — the country wants to kill or stall North American development of new oil sources.
     Why aren't right-wing U.S. politicians screaming bloody murder? Well, some of them really are as dumb as Louie Gohmert duct-taped to a Sandhills fencepost, but others realize that Saudi actions also have the effect of defunding the economy of an increasingly belligerent Russia.
     To a Saudi prince (there about 1,000 of them) Russia is the biggest oil competitor of Saudi Arabia in the world.  Surely the effect on Putin of plummeting petrol prices must be icing on the royal family's Spartan cookie of relative (and temporary) self-denial.
     Should we patriotic Americans fear for our loss of the "energy independence" that cynical GOP pols/grifters have groomed to be an incessant talking point/fabrication?
     Hell no. If the world insists on continuing to burn through fossil fuel, better to use cleaner Saudi Arabian crude which generates somewhat less CO2 in its production than the much filthier American alternatives that TransCanada and North Dakota drillers are producing.
     We should probably thank Saudi Arabia for the enlightened self-interest of its well-managed greed, because without same, the global warming apocalypse would be arriving even sooner.