Oil: ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ Isn’t Gone, Much As Saudis Like To Think

Oil: ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ Isn’t Gone, Much As Saudis Like To Think

Saudi Oil Minister Abdulaziz bin Salman is known for his brand of swagger and humor when conducting business. To send a shiver up the spines of oil bears, he invoked Hollywood tough-guy cop Dirty Harry, telling them to “make my day.”To let the world know that US shale isn't a threat to OPEC anymore, he said “‘Drill, baby, drill' is gone forever.” That might have been pushing it—because just a month after his verdict, the prolific US oil industry is proving the minister wrong.After producing 11 million barrels per day or below for months, drillers in America were projected to have pumped an additional 100,000 barrels a day in the final week of March, the Energy Information Administration said. But 11.1 million barrels daily is still nothing for a country that once led the world in producing as many as 13.1 million barrels a day, before the crippling demand destruction from the coronavirus pandemic.There are more statistics that suggest the once booming industry may be taking on a new life. The US , a measure of future production, stood at 337 during the week ended Mar. 26, nearly double from the August record low of 172. While that's less than half of the