In the 15 years since the first U.S. shale boom, the industry as a whole has failed to return a profit. Deloitte estimates that the coming wave of write-downs could amount to $300 billion. The next stage for U.S. shale is going to be consolidation, but over half of all shale companies may be superfluous The U.S. shale industry peaked without ever making money. Over the past decade and a half, the shale industry totaled $300 billion in net negative cash flow, wrote down another $450 billion in invested capital, and saw more than 190 bankruptcies since 2010, according to a new report from Deloitte. The U.S. shale industry more than doubled oil production over the past half-decade, a phenomenal increase in output. But “the reality is that the shale boom peaked without making money for the industry in the aggregate,” the consulting firm wrote in a searing indictment […]