For years people have been noting that the entirety of the anemic growth in world oil production has been coming from these high-cost tight oil deposits and tar sands in North America, with all the companies involved going into massive debt resembling a financial bubble because the world economy could not support prices that high. It was no surprise to many that that would fall apart messily.
This thread is for asking any questions that might seem obvious, tangential, silly or what-have-you. Don't be shy, everyone has holes in their knowledge, though the fewer and the smaller we can make them, the better.
Please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.
To any future monthly posters of SQ threads, please remember to add the "stupid_questions" tag.