RE:A lot of somebodies sit up and note the plunging rig countThe rich well run oil majors of North America (apart from their trading rooms) blithely ignore the day to day price gyrations in crude as “just noise” and focus on the business at hand. But apparently that was not the case on Friday when Baker Hughes announced that 90 rigs had been pulled offline. It certainly raised lots of eyebrows within those companies and was the talk of the town. Usually rig count numbers are just a ho-hum affair. From October 10th there has been in consistent decline but they were muted, smaller numbers, that is, until recently, when those weekly declines really started to accelerate. The -90 figure announced Friday was a real step-out and basically crammed 3 weeks of decline into one. It also gives the strong hint of more to follow. The majors are prudent and they will always take measures to reduce risk and protect their balance sheet. A lot of smaller producers are doing the same.