The oil industry invested more than $28 billion in buying up land in the Permian Basin in 2016, three times the amount spent in 2015, according to Reuters . That accounted for about 39 percent of all money spent on land acquisitions in the U.S. oil industry last year. Other shale basins do not even come close to that level of investment. By way of comparison, the Marcellus Shale attracted 10 percent of total land investment in 2016, while the once-hot Bakken only captured 3 percent. Money has flooded into West Texas because the Permian has both below-ground and aboveground advantages over other shale basins. To start with, the Permian has a vast volume of oil waiting to be tapped. But more importantly, it is geologically favorable for drillers – multiple shale formations are stacked on top of each other, which means that a driller can sink a vertical […]