More than a year ago, U.S. shale producers started to realize that investors were getting impatient about meager returns from the industry that was pumping record volumes of oil without sufficiently rewarding those shareholders that had stuck with it through thick and thin. Some independent U.S. drillers have started to increase dividends that were either slashed or frozen as a result of the oil price slump in 2015 and 2016. Others combined higher dividend payouts with share buybacks to further boost investor returns as oil prices rose in 2018 and drillers realized that growing value is now more important to shareholders than growing volumes at all costs. The trend of growing dividends among independent U.S. drillers is set to continue this year and more companies are expected to hike their dividend payouts, Matthew DiLallo with The Motley Fool argues . Yet, despite a year of a general trend in […]