Liam Denning, Columnist

America's Oil Workers Got a Christmas Bonus From OPEC

Higher crude prices will help shale producers handle rising wages.

December 2, 2016 at 3:55 PM UTC

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

Friday's jobs numbers confirm one thing about this week's OPEC agreement: Shale producers were readying to raise production weeks before officials gathered in Vienna.

Unlike the government's overall employment numbers, much of the data on oil-and-gas extraction and support workers comes out with a one-month lag. So what follows concerns October.