"Did the United States kill OPEC?"

"Did the United States kill OPEC?"
That's the question that New York Times economics columnist Eduardo Porter asks today, referencing Breakthrough Institute’s research, which found that 35 years of public-private investments led to the technologies that allow for the cheap extraction of natural gas and oil from shale.
The Breakthrough: Did the US Kill OPEC?
Four decades ago, in response to the 1973 OPEC oil embargo and declining natural gas supplies, the US government initiated a wide-ranging effort to find alternatives to conventional energy. The most infamous was “syn-fuels” — efforts to make transportation fuel from coal, a technology that has existed since World War I. There were also research projects and demonstrations to gasify coal underground and to build and deploy solar panels and wind turbines.http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/voices/michael-shellenberger-and-ted-nordhaus/did-the-us-kill-opec