Fracking and the booming short-cycle shale production in the Permian have revolutionized not only U.S. crude oil production. The prolific shale basin in West Texas and New Mexico has also shown U.S. supermajor Chevron that it needs to become more efficient in all of its other upstream operations, according to chairman and chief executive Mike Wirth. The shale production “has forced us to get smarter about how we do everything else,” Wirth told Bloomberg in an interview a year after he took over as CEO at the U.S. oil and gas major. U.S. shale has changed the way Chevron and Big Oil look at costs in all other projects, from deepwater oil to liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities, according to Chevron’s boss. It’s “lower your costs, or die,” Wirth told Bloomberg. Before the oil price crash of 2014, Big Oil was spending billions of U.S. dollars on mega projects […]