U.S. oil companies are evidently planning for substantially more capital investment following a modest jump in oil prices and favorable projections for the rest of 2017.
More than a dozen such companies recently detailed their spending plans for the year, according to The Wall Street Journal, and those budgets amounted to, on average, a 60 percent increase in capital expenditures.
The increases ranged from 18 percent by Hess, a prominent producer in North Dakota, to 137 percent for Extraction Oil & Gas, which is based in Denver.
Oil companies slashed their operations and budgets around the world in order to combat oil prices that plummeted in late 2014 and remained low for the following two years.
Members of OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia and its Persian Gulf allies, increased their production in in 2014 hopes of snuffing out competition from more expensive fracking operations in North America.
But instead, the fracking industry proved to be resilient and OPEC members struggled as oil prices wreaked havoc on their domestic budgets.
OPEC recently agreed to curb oil production once again, which moved prices above the $50 per barrel threshold and echoed promising forecasts for 2017 from market observers.
Paal Kibsgaard, CEO of oilfield services giant Schlumberger, cautioned last week that the "pace and scope of the recovery from here is uncertain," but U.S. producers appear anxious to seek out and tap new oil wells once again.
The number of oil rigs operating in the U.S. generally increased in late 2016 and into the new year, and last week showed the largest one-week jump since early 2013.
