The shale drillers behind booming U.S. oil and natural gas output have survived a bevy of challenges in recent years, from a historic oil price downturn to an effort by OPEC to wash them out of the market with a flood of cheap crude.
Now, with U.S. output at all-time highs near 12 million barrels per day, the industry is facing a new obstacle: how to keep growing output amid a wave of belt-tightening that is cutting billions of dollars from capital budgets.
