The total land rig count dropped 10 to 463 and the horizontal rig count fell 8 to 389 rigs.
Tight oil plays lost 8 rigs: Bakken (-3), Eagle Ford (-1) and Permian (-2), Niobara (-1) and Mississippi Lime (-1).
Shale gas plays gained 2 rigs: Haynesville (+2), Marcellus (-1) and Woodford (+1). Utica, Barnett and Fayetteville were unchanged.
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This week represents a fairly pronounced change in the rate of rig count decline over the last several weeks. I don't think it means much by itself unless the trend continues.
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By Art Berman for Oilprice.com
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Arthur E. Berman is a petroleum geologist with 36 years of oil and gas industry experience. He is an expert on U.S. shale plays and… More
Comments
I'm still fairly naive to most of the oil producing world but if I'm not mistaken, isn't the horizontal rig count in the U.S. somewhat challenging to quantify from a production point of view in our traditional measures as each rig can have more than one bore?
I use bore as that is all I can think of to say more than one drilling into a deposit.
Also, the horizontal rigs that are active as compared to those that are drilled but not yet brought online as far as actually producing oil is not a whole other animal again?
As we've all read over the downturn of the rig count, there are many that are just are waiting to be 'turned on' to start pumping once the necessary price is met for the producer by the market?
Nonetheless this all seems very exciting given the pounding the industry and it's beloved investors have gone through since late 2014 as we now seem to be slowly and in fits and starts, coming to a trade to the upside in price which should be more profitable for those investors who can hold their nerve at each trough.
Horizontal rigs do not pump nor produce oil.
It sounds like you have a "horizontal oil well" mixed up with the "horizontal rig", which is the huge machine that drills the well.