That's my guess too, but large numbers of new drilling sites - especially remote ones - would drive up costs while simultaneously helping to keep per-barrel prices low. Just sounds like a terrible ROI to me.

Well, I don't really expect this to cause oil extraction costs to go up. I don't think companies would waste money choosing more expensive drilling sites. But this could also signal an attack on local regulations too. It would make a big difference if local fracking bans were made illegal. Texas did that.

Yeah, I don't see an effect on extraction costs, I was just talking about the significant up-front capex costs in what looks to be a historically slack market.

Very interesting thought regarding local regulations; hadn't considered something like that at a federal level. It does also occur to me that this could just be a convenient way to make the opening up of large amounts of protected lands more palatable to the general public.