U.S. shale producers are facing their first production cost increase in five years in 2017 as industry activity picks up and energy service providers hike fees to take a bigger share of the profits generated by higher oil prices. Drilling innovations over the past decade have generated a dizzying reduction in the cost of pumping oil from shale formations across the United States – the world’s largest energy consumer – triggering an energy revolution and a production boom. When that boom ended with the onset of a two-year global price war in 2014, shale producers responded with even deeper cost cuts. Technological breakthroughs allowed producers to wring more oil from the rock and halved the per-barrel price needed to turn a profit. But […]