toobad41

How Increased Rig Count Could Affect the Rest of the Energy Sector

respected rig pig...
I agree with all that you have said. My comments were just aimed to the reality of what rig count means in the media. In addition, rig count starts with someone (i.e. geologist or reservoir engineer) who recommends a well or series of wells to be drilled. Without a drilling budget, no well is drilled. Even when moneys are available to drill a well, you have to get the regulatory agency to approve it, you have to have a location staked (surveyed), location built (contract a crew to build the site), contract a drilling company to drill the well. Often, in order to get a company to drill the well, a contract will consist of a series of wells. Many contractors won't drill just one well. They would like to drill perhaps 20 or 30 wells. I have contracted a driller to drill all of our wells for the whole year. That process starts a year in advance. Beyond what you say about on the ground people there are many people in the "main" office who take care of the bills (accounting), updating production, etc. It goes on and on.

How Increased Rig Count Could Affect the Rest of the Energy Sector

Rig count changes daily. Even a weekly rig count is just a best guess. The reason being is that rigs vary in size and restricted to depths they can drill. Some take a week to ten days to drill and complete because they drill to shallow objectives. Others may take months to drill and complete because they are larger and drill to deep objectives. To make a long story short, the rig count is more like a moving average. By-the-way, every rig in operation has about 20 people working. When the rig count dropped by 1007 that means over 20,000 people unemployed.