Big Oil embraces global exploration again as Chevron returns to Libya

As the U.S. shale oil boom matures, Big Oil is doing something it hasn’t done in years: increasing global exploration outside of the Americas. In the most notable recent move, Chevron announced on Feb. 11 its return to Libya, after 15 years away.

Following two decades of depressed global searching for oil and gas, frontier exploration is bouncing back. The industry’s biggest producers had cut spending on costly global efforts as they leaned into West Texas’ Permian Basin and the rest of the onshore U.S., as well as proven offshore basins, including the Gulf of Mexico.

For context, that decision proved to be wise: The shale boom—with its horizontal drilling coupled with hydraulic fracturing, or fracking—turned the U.S. from a country that pumped out 5 million barrels of oil a day 20 years ago into a world-leading powerhouse churning out almost 14 million barrels daily and even exporting nearly 5 million barrels.

That allowed Chevron, Exxon Mobil, and others to ease off of the metaphorical gas pedal globally and instead focus much more on literal oil and...