Since he returned to the Oval Office, the benchmark West Texas Intermediate oil price has fallen from $80 a barrel to $60 (see chart 1). That is a problem for the country’s shale patch, which accounts for around two-thirds of domestic output—and for smaller producers in particular,

Terrel Hardin was at a diner along Route 66 in western Oklahoma when his phone rang with bad news: The engine on one of his oil rigs had broken. In times past it would be a straightforward $6,000 fix,