Shale Drillers Looking Farther Afield -- WSJ -- Mary 14, 2018

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The lede:

Shale drillers are ramping up production in the U.S. as oil prices rise, moving beyond the West Texas oil field that became the country’s drilling center.

From Oklahoma to North Dakota, companies are increasing investment in oil fields that fell out of favor several years ago, as $70-a-barrel crude prices make fracking and horizontal drilling economical in more places again.

While the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico remains the fastest-growing shale spot, congested pipelines and shortages of labor and materials there are crimping profits, making other fields attractive alternatives.

EOG Resources Inc., EOG 1.08% one of the shale sector’s leaders, is active in the Permian but also in Colorado, North Dakota and Oklahoma. In Wyoming, the company has built up larger lease holdings and expanded production over the past two years.

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Some of the oil fields that are growing, notably the Bakken and Eagle Ford, had been popular among shale drillers and experienced their own bottleneck problems before prices started dropping in 2014. After topping out at more than $100 a barrel in June 2014, oil prices plunged, falling below $30 in early 2016 before slowly recovering. The current prices above $70 are the highest in more than three years.

Continental Resources Inc., CLR  which is focused in North Dakota and Oklahoma, is benefiting from improved pipeline capacity in those areas. It sold crude produced in North Dakota at a discount to the main U.S. oil benchmark, West Texas Intermediate, of just $4.31 a barrel, executives told investors this month. In parts of Oklahoma, that figure was less than $2.

Price differentials in the Bakken had become as wide as $28 a barrel six years ago, according to the EIA, as production outstripped pipeline capacity.

“We are having infrastructure catch up with development in North Dakota and in Oklahoma,” said Blu Hulsey, the company’s senior vice president of government and regulatory affairs.