President Donald Trump’s campaign promise of U.S. “energy dominance” is running into a flood of OPEC crude oil — a surge of fuel production pushed by the Saudi leaders greeting him during his Mideast trip this week.

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,