Don’t count on America’s shale industry to boom once again in response to $50 per barrel oil and Saudi Arabia’s plan to throttle back its own oil production. (Bloomberg) — Don’t count on America’s shale industry to boom once again in response to $50-a-barrel oil and Saudi Arabia’s plan to throttle back its own oil production. What in previous years might have triggered a knee-jerk reaction by U.S. oil explorers to raise output and grab market share is, this time around, more just an opportunity for them to pay down debt or boost dividends. “Our primary priority right now is to reduce debt,” Occidental Petroleum Corp. Chief Executive Officer Vicki Hollub, who heads one of the largest exploration and production operations in Texas’s Permian Basin, said in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Tuesday. “We’re pretty close to the right production profile for $50 a barrel today because what […]