“While natural gas producers benefited from cold weather forcing closure of wells, shale oil drillers stood on the losing side of the trade as frozen pipes and power supply interruptions were expected to slow an output recovery, operators said.”

Analysts tell Reuters that “[s]hale oil producers could take at least two weeks to restart the more than 2 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude output lost during the cold snap and some production may never return because of the cost of restarting marginal wells.”