As oil recovers, US firms descend on Permian Basin, Texas

Odessa, Texas

IN most US shale oil regions, energy firms are making strategic but cautious bets as the price of oil holds above US$50 a barrel.

Here in the Permian Basin of West Texas, the largest US oil patch, the industry poured more than US$28 billion into land acquisitions last year - more than triple what they spent in 2015.

Those deals set the stage for much larger investments needed to extract the oil from the ground - and they illustrate how the Permian Basin has become the epicentre for the US shale resurgence after a historic oil price crash.

"We could easily s…