Hit by low prices, US drillers keep oil underground

Houston

OIL drillers in the United States expecting prices to rebound after the biggest drop in six years have come up with an alternative to storing their crude in tanks: They're keeping it in the ground.

It's a new twist on an old oil trading technique, known as a contango storage play, in which a trader buys cheap crude in an oversupplied market and saves it to lock in profits at higher future prices. Drillers who have spent millions boring holes through petroleum-rich shale rock are just waiting for prices to go up before turning on the spigot.