The Permian pipeline bottleneck continues to pinch the shale industry, forcing steep discounts for oil stuck in West Texas. Yet, the midstream constraints will be temporary and few in the industry are overly concerned. Despite the lack of pipeline space, production in Texas continues to grow. The EIA said that production in Texas jumped by 165,000 bpd in June compared to a month earlier, a very strong increase in output. That came even as reports of pipeline constraints had already begun to crop up, and discounts for oil in Midland had started to rise. So far, there are indeed some signs of a drilling slowdown. The rig count has been flat since June and the discounts have steepened. The backlog of drilled but uncompleted wells continues to rise as completion activity has slowed, which is an outgrowth of midstream bottlenecks. The chief executives of Halliburton and Schlumberger, two top […]