Liam Denning, Columnist

The Next Shale Fracker Revolution Has Begun

Having run out of ways to lure investors, the sector is turning to consolidation.

February 22, 2019 at 2:26 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.

The dawn of a new era.
Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images North America

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Successful revolutions must eventually grapple with the question of what to do with that success. The shale revolution is grappling with that right now.

Two veteran shale executives, Tim Dove and Floyd Wilson, have just stepped down from the top jobs at Pioneer Natural Resources Co. and Halcón Resources Corp., respectively. Dove had set a goal of quadrupling Pioneer’s output to 1 million barrels of oil equivalent within a decade, but the spending required has started to grate on investors. Wilson, meanwhile, sold his old company, Petrohawk Energy Corp. to BHP Group Plc (who eventually sold it onto BP Plc after some unhappy times), and then launched Halcón, which lost money, saw its stock collapse, and wound up drawing the attentions of an activist fund.