The prediction still seems a little preposterous, but we’ve stuck with it.

The Marcellus Shale gas revolution taking place in Butler County and elsewhere will be the undoing of OPEC’s half-century stranglehold on the United States.

We made that prediction more than a year ago. Now it’s not just us saying it.

“The clash between OPEC and America’s oil industry is reaching a day of reckoning,” Bloomberg News reported on Monday. “The U.S. shale revolution is on course to be the greatest oil and gas boom in history, turning a nation once at the mercy of imports into a global player. That seismic shift shattered the dominance of Saudi Arabia and the OPEC cartel, forcing them into an alliance with longtime rival Russia to keep a grip on world markets.”

It’s a precarious balance, for sure. For nearly two years a glut of crude oil has suppressed wholesale prices on all sources of energy. That was the OPEC cartel’s original plan — flood the market, lower prices to a point where it’s not profitable to bring Marcellus products to market, since processing them is marginally more costly than conventionally drilled gas and oil.

OPEC abandoned that strategy a year ago; six months later, the U.S. stockpiles of crude were actually 6 percent higher than they were in November 2016 when Saudi Arabia, OPEC allies and Russia agreed to voluntary production cutbacks.

Now the stockpiles are finally moderating. Prices are rising slightly across energy indexes. “Global oil stockpiles are draining and prices are near two-year highs,” Bloomberg reports, “but as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia prepare to meet in Vienna this week to extend production cuts, ministers have little idea how U.S. shale production will respond in 2018.”

There are political fortunes hanging on the outcome. “For OPEC members, the stakes couldn’t be higher,” Bloomberg states. “Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman is embarking on a radical economic transformation of the kingdom, including a partial sale of its state oil company that could be the largest public offering in history. Venezuela, reeling from years of recession and a crushing debt burden, is on the brink of political implosion.”

And what about Pennsylvania? A state judge scuttled Gov. Tom Wolf’s plan to commandeer $200 million in cash reserves from a medical malpractice insurance fund, leaving a gap in his $32 billion budget that’s now five months past due. All the while, we’re sitting atop natural gas reserves big enough to topple OPEC.

Which leads to the question of even greater priority: Why haven’t our political leaders found a balance that prospers both the state and its fledgling Marcellus industry? How can our state be essentially broke while sitting atop such a vast and valuable resource? We need to be more intentional in developing this resource to the benefit of all Pennsylvanians.