Big Oil is muscling in on shale country. For example, there's a project called Bongo 76-43, a well being drilled 10,000 feet beneath the table-flat West Texas desert. It extends horizontally for a mile, blasting through rock to capture light crude from the sprawling Permian Basin. While the first chapter of the U.S. shale revolution belonged to wildcatters like Harold Hamm and the late Aubrey McClendon, who parlayed borrowed money into billions, Bongo 76-43 is financed by a deep-pocketed major, Royal Dutch Shell Pic. Some of the world's top oil companies-including Shell, Exxon Mobil Corp., and Chevron Corp.-plan to spend a combined $10 billion on shale projects in 2017, up from next to nothing only a few years ago.
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