Dirty energy lobbyists claimed developing tar sands would protect our national energy security and bring U.S. fuel prices down. But environmental reviews by both the Obama and Trump administrations concluded that the Keystone XL pipeline would not have lowered gasoline prices. NRDC and its partners also found the majority of Keystone XL oil would have been sent to markets overseas—aided by a 2015 reversal of a ban on crude oil exports. This lines up with an industry trend: Oil and gas companies are exporting 8.4 million barrels of crude oil and refined fuels every single day. That’s up nearly threefold from a decade ago, and an amount equal to 42 percent of our consumption. And these exports are more than 10 times the capacity of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.

But the even bigger challenge is getting the oil to refineries. Tar sands producers would love to send their oil to the upper Midwest, but those refineries are already saturated with domestic crude. They have no use for the cheap stuff from Alberta. That means the tar sands oil has to travel all the way to the Gulf of Mexico—more than twice the distance.

First you need to understand a bit about the economics of tar sands oil—a cheap, off-brand version of conventional crude. (You know a product is bad when it’s compared unfavorably to oil.) Refiners don’t particularly want tar sands oil, which is tougher to make into usable transportation fuel, so it sells for about $20 to $30 less per barrel than crude from Texas or the Dakotas. Therefore, if producers can’t make it on the cheap, they can’t afford to make it at all.

But note that a US recession isn’t required to bring down the price of oil. All that’s needed is industrial stagnation or decline in many other countries.

Nine out of 10 previous postwar recessions began shortly after a big spike in the price of oil. Yet those recessions always slashed oil prices dramatically. People who have been predicting both a nasty US recession and $200 oil prices are contradicting themselves.

Oil prices have a huge impact on producers’ cost of production — profits and losses — not just on consumers’ cost of living.

The price of crude oil has jumped as high as $135 lately, up from $87 in early February. The news encouraged some Wall Street analysts to suggest oil might approach $200 before long. In fact, that’s quite impossible: The world economy can’t handle current energy prices, much less a big increase. Which in turn means that oil prices will fall.

In short, a huge share of crude oil is used to produce and distribute industrial products. That explains why the price of oil is extremely cyclical — that is, it tends to rise during economic booms and fall during contractions. It dropped 44 percent in the last recession (from November 2000 to November 2001), 48 percent from October 1990 to January 1992 — and 71 percent from July 1980 to July 1986.