Economics
Price Collapse Hits Scavengers Who Scrape the Bottom of Big Oil's Barrel
Stripper wells were a vital contributor to U.S. oil production long before the shale revolution.
Patrick T. Fallon/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
In the $1.6 trillion-a-year oil business, there are global titans like Exxon Mobil Corp. that wield more economic might than most of the nations on Earth, and scores of wildcatters scouring land and sea for the next treasure troves of crude.
Then there are the strippers. For these canaries in the proverbial coal mine, the journey keeps going deeper and darker.