RE:RE:Oil rig count down again....but it doesn't seem to matter But the real point with the rig count is that no significant “new” production is being added to offset an ageing well demographic that has a rapidly declining production. At current price levels counts must continue to bleed out. And I can offer you real math. Gas directed rigs sit at 19.7% of their all-time high, yes, an 80% decline! Oil directed rigs 32.5% of their all-time high, a 66% decline! That last figure blew by my estimate of 538 yesterday by 14 rigs. Believe me, when I set that figure I doubted that we would ever hit it!
When oil was a $100 a barrel there were lots of sweet spots. At current prices, sweet spots reside in just a few counties within each of the various shale plays. At $35 oil I would guess the oil directed rig count might yet be too high. It may have to join the gas rig number at closer to 20%. 25% would yield a 400 number but that somehow looks to be an impossibly low figure to achieve.
Repairing balance sheets and trying to restore investor confidence in financing rigs to resume drilling will be no mean task. So we may see no response to rising prices until there has been a substantial movement higher and some degree of assurance that the direction is definitely up. In hindsight I think there were too many rigs in the field 2011-14 and easy money to finance them. After 08-09, drilling up the U.S. of A was the only game in town for investors. To some extent it created the glut that we see now, that is somewhat exacerbated by the Saudis and their OPEC inner circle. Without them we would have arrived here in any event given the rising supply and a flagging global economy. But with such a lengthy drilling hiatus it essentially erases all the work on the blackboard and if it persists it brings us to the point of having to start all over again on the drilling, -just as if it never happened. And that would set up for another lengthy cycle of drilling in a rising price environment. So maybe the watchword is to “Keep the faith baby or perhaps the other way round …. “Keep the baby, Faith.” Of course the latter meaning hold on to your oil and gas stocks.