US shale drillers cannot contain oil price rise, Pioneer boss says

US shale drillers cannot contain oil price rise, Pioneer boss says

US oil producers are not able to increase supply to tame soaring crude prices that remain “under Opec control”, according to the shale patch’s biggest operator.

Brent crude jumped to a three-year price high above$80 a barrel last week, sparking fears of a deepening global energy crunch that has already pushed natural gas and coal prices in Europe and Asia to record highs.

But Scott Sheffield, chief executive of Texas-based Pioneer Natural Resources, said America’s once-prolific shale producers would keep using their burgeoning cash piles to pay shareholders, not fund new drilling.

“Everybody’s going to be disciplined, regardless whether it’s $75 Brent, $80 Brent, or $100 Brent,” Sheffield said. “All the shareholders that I’ve talked to said that if anybody goes back to growth, they will punish those companies.”

“I don’t think the world can rely much on US shale,” he said. “It’s really under Opec control.”

Pioneer bought two rival Texas producers this year, making it the prolific Permian Basin’s biggest single oil producer with output of almost 360,000 barrels a day — more than some of the smaller member countries of the Opec oil cartel. It has said it will cap any output increase next year at 5 per cent, well beneath the