Permian Basin adds one rig this week
http://www.mrt.com/business/article_ed150644-e326-11e3-b0eb-0019bb2963f4.html
With multipad drilling plus several other innovations—rig count has become a secondary measure of future oil production. See the link above to Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse analysis of the bakken. The article writer that headlines this thread is way off the mark.
I had a couple clients/jobs in the Monahans - Hobbs corridor building rail loadouts for crude oil unit trains. The Hobbs paper had a rig count every week for Lea County, IIRC. Exciting place to be... and my firm would do well to try and solicit work there... it’s real work, real capitalist investment with a PROFIT MOTIVE... not bullshit of chasing around grant money for useless projects.
I miss the Permian Basin... as much as it was fairly brutal being in the field working 112 hrs a week.