Exxon, Shell, and Chevron plan to spend $10 billion in the U.S. shale patch this year. A gas flare is seen through the window as Royal Dutch Shell’s Scott W. Scheffler drives near Mentone, Texas, in Loving County situated in a central portion of the Delaware Basin, on Thursday, March 2, 2017. Big Oil is muscling in on shale country. Exxon Mobil Corp. , Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Chevron Corp. , are jumping into American shale with gusto, planning to spend a combined $10 billion this year, up from next to nothing only a few years ago. The giants are gaining a foothold in West Texas with such projects as Bongo 76-43, a well which is being drilled 10,000 feet beneath the table-flat, sage-scented desert, and which then extends horizontally for a mile, blasting through rock to capture light crude from the sprawling Permian Basin. While the first […]