208 – Bakken – from the current active drilling rig list at the N.D. Department of Mineral Resources website on 8-2-12.
270 – Eagle Ford – from EagleFordShale blog.
That is down 7 and down 8 since my June 30 post.
Don’t worry about the drop in rig count, which went from 493 in my last post to 478 now.
I’ve seen several comments in the last month about drillers in both Bakken and Eagle Ford improving their productivity. Here is an example from Eagle Ford Shale blog:
The company [Marathon] plans to lower its rig count for the remainder of the year, but will still meet its well targets. Marathon can lower the rig count and drill the 230-240 wells planned because the company has lowered its spud to spud drilling time to 23 days from more than 40 days less than a year ago.
Putting that into simple terms, a year ago one rig drilling for 365 days straight could drill 9 wells and have just started on number 10. Today, a rig working 365 days straight could drill 15 rigs and almost be done with number 16.
Ignoring variables that I don’t even know about, starting with move-in and rig-up, that is an efficient improvement of about 42% (17 day improvement divided by 40 days previous time).
Like I said, don’t worry about a decline in rig count with that kind of productivity increase.
To your point, with productivity on the rise in both the Bakken and Eagle Ford, I would expect the rig count to increase in the near term.
Great post. Good info. Thanks!
Rig counts go down because of increased productivity or rig counts go up because expanded drilling is greater than efficiency gains or more more drillers move into the plays means more rigs in the area, doesn’t matter. It’s all good. Looks to me like there’s a bright future in both plays.
Thanks for sharing your expectation.