Americans will give thanks for just about everything this weekend, and most of all for one another. I’ll save a toast for George Mitchell, the man who more than any other is enabling America to wipe the smirks off faces of a lot of people who have deserved it for an exceedingly long time.

Mitchell is the pioneer of hydraulic fracking, the breakthrough that has increased U.S. crude oil production by 80% since 2008. Combined with more conservation, and growth hiccups of varying severity in emerging economies, all that oil has pushed the price of crude down nearly 30% since July even as U.S. economic growth picks up.

That brings us to this week’s meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, and all the lousy regimes whose suffering it will lay bare.

Some numbers, first. In 2005, the U.S. produced about 5 million barrels of oil a day, in a market of about 90 million barrels a day then dominated by the 12 OPEC nations, including Saudi Arabia. And — this is the key part — even with all the growth in Asian nations and a recovery in the U.S., demand for oil is only growing about 1% a year.

As fracking made it possible to extract ever more oil from shale rock, the Oslo-based consulting group Rystad Energy figured the U.S. and Canada would be able to produce 6.5 million barrels a day from shale alone by 2020 (with more coming from traditional wells). This week, Rystad partner Lars-Erik Nicolaisen told me that estimate for shale alone is now up to 12.1 million barrels a day.

And here’s the really funny part, for schadenfreude lovers: This doesn’t even count the Canadian oil sands, whose oil the Keystone XL pipeline is being proposed to carry for companies like Cenovus Energy CVE, -5.31% . Those may produce another 4 million or so barrels by then, up from 2 million last year, the Canadian Energy Research Institute says.

So you have a market with probably 20% to 25% more supply than in 2005 and about 15% more demand — if that, with tough U.S. fuel-economy standards aimed at Ford F, -5.04% , General Motors GM, -5.47% and Toyota TM, -2.40% in the pipeline. The production cuts OPEC is discussing, only 500,000 to 1 million barrels a day, won’t turn this big a tide back on oil majors like Exxon Mobil XOM, -3.56% and Chevron CVX, -4.07% . Thankfully, the highest-cost, smallest, most-vulnerable world producers are exactly the jerks who have made U.S foreign policy such a chore.

Toodles, fellas. Venezuela produces 2.5 million barrels a day — mostly dirty, heavy oil the oil-sands crude from Alberta will largely displace. Libya, which somehow hasn’t found much more suitable characters than Muammar Gaddafi to run the joint, produces 900,000 and, according to Goldman Sachs GS, -1.78% , needs prices at $185 a barrel to balance its budget. Iran needs $133 per barrel. All of those figures rise if they produce less, which is one reason why preliminary talks Tuesday are pointing to no cut at all. The rogue states’ cash flow can’t handle it. OPEC’s low-cost producers are Western-friendly powers like Kuwait.

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs’ Jeff Currie puts this nicely: “U.S. shale-oil production grows by Libya’s capacity every year.” Rystad’s Nicolaisen says the U.S. can still boost production, though not as much, with $60 oil. Some would argue the details, and commodities strategists would like to see U.S. production growth slow so prices can rise. But if shale’s job is depriving rogue regimes of oil leverage, it’s done.

No such discussion would be complete without mentioning Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which Sen. John McCain has aptly described as a gas station masquerading as a superpower.

Russia needs $101 crude to balance its budget, not the $79 Brent price on Tuesday, Goldman says. Russia’s finance minister recently said the crude crash is costing them $90 billion to $100 billion a year, and Western sanctions over Putin’s Ukraine adventurism cost another $40 billion.

No wonder Russia’s economy is stalled, with the ruble down nearly 40% this year. If it keeps up, Putin will need distractions, like riding shirtless on a horse and using laughably disguised proxies to invade his neighbors, throwing circuses to distract his populace from increasingly thin supplies of bread.

Oh wait, that already happened. Pass the stuffing.