The oil companies aren't gambling with other people's money. They're gambling with their own. If they couldn't make money at it, they wouldn't do it. These aren't emotional decisions on their part.

Your "political" theory, that the oil companies love getting crapped on at every level, is at least creative, even if it makes little sense. High prices? That's how the market is supposed to work when a resource becomes harder to get at.

The real politicians, the ones actually in politics, have much to gain from an environment where the energy companies are in complete thrall to the State. Combine this with energy shortages that justify rationing, controls, taxes, limits, energy "crimes," and a population completely dependent on the state for their share of a shrinking pie, and you have a situation that gives politicians stiffies you could cut glass with.

The last thing such people want is abundant, cheap energy. There is no power to be had from a prosperous and optimistic population. You want to see misery and death, go visit some nations that don't have any "risky" megatechnologies. Poverty has killed far more people than oil wells or nuclear reactors ever will.

You seem to have filters that can only perceive profit as a motivating factor. The idea of power never even registers, although that motivation is centuries older and has made far more history.