Conventional drilling in old fields is starting to look more attractive as low crude prices make some fracking operations too expensive to pursue. Shown, an oil well outside Bakersfield, Calif. From California’s Central Valley to the Native American lands of Oklahoma, more small- and mid-sized oil firms—many backed by private equity—are forgoing expensive shale drilling projects and opting for old-school wells instead. As crude prices languish under $50 a barrel, and with increasing costs for land, labor and infrastructure, some shale fracking operations are starting to look expensive. That has some investors turning to conventional drilling to make a profit. Tapping shale involves fracking, drilling horizontal wells that extend for more than a mile, then using a highly pressurized mixture of water and chemicals to break open underground rock layers. The process has attracted billions of dollars in capital because it can unleash huge volumes of oil, but at […]