In most U.S. shale oil regions, energy firms are making strategic but cautious bets as the price of oil holds above $50 a barrel.
Here in the Permian Basin of West Texas, the largest U.S. oil patch, the industry poured more than $28 billion into land acquisitions last year – more than triple what they spent in 2015.
Those deals set the stage for much larger investments needed to extract the oil from the ground – and they illustrate how the Permian Basin has become the epicenter for the U.S. shale resurgence after a historic oil price crash.
