Summary...
The sheer magnitude of the decline in the U.S. gas-directed rig count since 2010 may overshadow the fact that in the past several months the E&P industry has been quietly putting rigs back to work in some of the key dry gas plays. The uptick may have gone little noticed in the depth of broader rig statistics (which also coincided with the holiday recess). While the net increase in the total gas-directed rig count at this point is modest, the step up in dry gas drilling - which is amplified by very high short-term production yields per well - is large enough to make a meaningful, on the margin, contribution to what increasingly appears to be...