Fellow Bakken shale peer Whiting Petroleum (NYSE: WLL) also had no choice but to dramatically reduce spending last year to live within cash flow as it worked to reduce its overleveraged balance sheet. That situation forced the company to slash capital expenditures by 80% initially to just $500 million. At that investment level, production would fall to an average of about 133,000 BOE/d, which represented a dramatic drop from 2015's average of 163,200 BOE/d, though some of that decline was the result of asset sales used to pay off debt.