The oil patch needs more brain for its brawn. The reason is enough to give pause to anyone enjoying the benefits of cheap, abundant energy produced in the U.S. New wells are fizzling out in their first year, threatening the 3-year-old oil boom. The challenge is forging alliances between two groups who previously rarely needed to work eyeball to eyeball — the people who know rocks and the people who poke holes in rocks. Halliburton engineer Ron Dusterhoft, who was charged with marshaling a SWAT team of experts to tackle the problem, can now see a solution using artificial intelligence software dubbed Cypher. One Texas well that the team studied for months should have been drilled deeper, at a different slope, to really hit the sweet spot for oil. More from the report Gas Boom: America for Shale : “A lot of these wells aren’t performing […]