  Recent surprising discoveries of collective behaviour of low-$p_T$ particles
in $pA$ collisions at LHC hint at the creation of a hot, fluid-like QGP medium.
The seemingly conflicting measurements of non-zero particle correlations and
$R_{pA}$ that appears to be consistent with unity demand a more careful
analysis of the mechanisms at work in such ostensibly minuscule systems. We
study the way in which energy is dissipated in the QGP created in $pA$
collisions by calculating, in pQCD, the short separation distance corrections
to the well-known DGLV energy loss formulae that have produced excellent
predictions for $AA$ collisions. We find that, shockingly, due to the large
formation time (compared to the $1/\mu$ Debye screening length) assumption that
was used in the original DGLV calculation, a highly non-trivial cancellation of
correction terms results in a null short path length correction to the DGLV
energy loss formula. We investigate the effect of relaxing the large formation
time assumption in the final stages of the calculation -- doing so throughout
the calculation adds immense calculational complexity -- and find, since the
separation distance between production and scattering centre is integrated over
from $0$ to $\infty$, $\gtrsim 100\%$ corrections, even in the large path
length approximation employed by DGLV.
