"Yet shareholder satisfaction is not the only reason U.S. shale is holding back on production expansion. After all, there are plenty of private oil drillers in the U.S. shale patch that do not answer to shareholders. These are the companies that analysts see as leading the total increase in U.S. oil production, perhaps precisely because they don’t answer to shareholders"
Slight correction, private companies absolutely have shareholders, they're just not public. These groups, PE investors: Warburg, Kayne, Quantum, Lime Rock, NGP, Apollo, Carlyle, Encap in many ways took more a bath in 2020 than did the public market and IMHO are even more vehemently asking for returns not growth. IMHO you need to see a bunch of M&A activity (privates being bought, or going public) events which return money to these companies, before these companies will invest additional funds in the oil patch and/or tell their companies to grow production significantly.