Shale Patch Struggles 5 Years After Crude Collapse
The turmoil the shale sector in the US goes through is a constant workout that makes sure that only the fittest survive and also that those that survive get fitter still. Nothing changes an industry more than a batch of cornered entrepreneurs running for their shirts. It’s not important that all survive, hell even if 90% of them bite the dust, the remaining 10% will develop ways of how to deal with every imaginable problem that the rest of the shale world will quickly emulate. In the end, it won’t matter much who survives, but rather what the world will look like after the dust settles. OPEC and its friends give shale drillers a good run for their money but this run makes them lean and mean and a harder opponent to mess with.
It’s been five years since crude started a precipitous drop that eventually saw it hit a low of $26 a barrel. While prices have recovered some of the lost ground, shale producers are still feeling the pain.
