Slowing U.S. crude oil production growth will likely lead to a new wave of consolidation across the U.S. shale patch, where the big players will acquire the ‘smaller guys’, shale pioneer Mark Papa told Reuters in an interview published on Tuesday. Papa, who is also now also non-executive board chairman at the world’s biggest oilfield services group Schlumberger, expects U.S. production to grow at a much slower pace in 2020 than the EIA predicts. In its December Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), the EIA expects U.S. crude oil production to grow by 900,000 bpd this year to average 13.2 million bpd. This year’s growth will be slower than the 1.6 million bpd increase in 2018 and the 1.3 million bpd rise in 2019, according to EIA’s estimates. Papa, however, sees U.S. oil production rising by just 400,000 bpd this year. Over the next five years until 2025, U.S. crude oil […]