The Bakken formation is not shale oil.
It's standard crude oil. But speaking of shale and tar sand, there are trillions of barrels of oil locked away in those in Utah and other Rocky Mountain states. As it stands now, this country is going to fall on the sword of "green energy". I don't want to pay $5/gal or more for gas and watch my country slide into a dark age because of the stoic fatalism of idiotic Greens.
Cheap energy now will give us the money and time to develop viable and real world "clean energy" alternatives on our terms, and implement them at a leisurely pace as they become mature.