Debt may be US shale players' undoing

New York

THE debt that fuelled the US shale boom now threatens to be its undoing.

Drillers are devoting more revenue than ever to interest payments. In one example, Continental Resources Inc, the company credited with making North Dakota's Bakken Shale one of the biggest oil-producing regions in the world, spent almost as much as Exxon Mobil Corp, a company 20 times its size.