When you’re in control of global spare capacity — the ability to extract more barrels to meet rising demand — life is good. In our case, it led to a massive boost to U.S. oil output and the sudden explosion of crude exports after Congress repealed the ban in late 2015. Even more important was the fact that the world didn’t have to rely on the whims of OPEC and Russia as more and more U.S. oil flowed into the market. The problem is that those boom times are officially behind us.