Shale oil outlook still strong despite difculties

摘要

Headwinds facing the US shale oil industry are likely to intensify but the drilling and broader activity outlook remains robust heading into 2019, when the sector expects many of its transitory challenges to fade. US onshore operators face three main challenges — a shortage of pipeline capacity to move crude and associated natural gas out of the top producing Permian basin, rising costs for services such as pressure pumping, and a lack of staf to work the felds and drive the trucks. Companies have a range of responses, oil feld services frm Halliburton chief executive Jef Miller says. These include reallocating capital to other basins, slowing down activity and building up inventories of drilled but uncompleted wells, he says.