Shale boss says US has passed peak oil

US crude production has already peaked, according to one of the country’s leading shale executives, as producers battered by the price crash shun new output growth and start trying to become profitable. Matt Gallagher, chief executive of Parsley Energy, one of Texas’s biggest independent oil producers, said the record output level struck earlier this year would be the high-water mark. “I don’t think I’ll see 13m [barrels a day] again in my lifetime,” the 37-year-old Mr Gallagher told the Financial Times. “It is really dejecting, because drilling our first well in 2009 we saw the wave of energy independence at our fingertips for the US, and it was very rewarding . . . to be a part of it.” American oil output plunged by as much as a quarter this spring, as crude prices crashed in the wake of a Saudi-Russia price war and the coronavirus outbreak, prompting several operators, including Parsley, to shut wells and slash planned spending...MORE