Shale Drillers Squeeze Costs as Era of Exploration Ends: Energy

The pioneers of America’s shale gas and oil revolution have done their work. Now it’s time for the factory crews to take over.

After spending $53 billion on a land binge to find hydrocarbons, the petroleum industry is counting on technological innovations -- better imaging data, speedier and longer horizontal drilling, among them -- to ramp up the flow of oil and gas from U.S. shale fields where they’re drilling more than 10,000 wells a year.