Permian’s production growth—the main driver of the second shale revolution as oil prices crept higher this year—may be limited not by geological or technological constraints, but by a shortage of truck drivers to transport the increasing volumes of oil pumped out of the most prolific areas to pipelines and storage hubs. With the recovery of oil prices and booming Permian production, companies are looking to re-hire truckers after having dismissed a lot of them in the aftermath of the 2014 oil price crash. The truckers, however, are in short supply. First, because some of them are not returning to the boom-and-bust cycle industry of oil production, and second, because truck drivers are concerned that companies will not be paying them as much as they did three years ago, as the new mantra of careful spending is sweeping across the U.S. shale patch. At the pace at which the Permian […]