Posted on 01/09/2015 1:27:34 PM PST by thackney
Producers idled the most oil rigs in a single week since 1991, as a more than 50 percent fall in crude prices further impacted drilling.
The number of rigs searching or drilling for oil fell by 61 to 1,421 while the number of rigs pursuing natural gas rose by one to 329, according to oil service company Baker Hughes’ weekly count. One miscellaneous rig was idled.
The United States total rig count fell by 61 rigs to 1,750 from 1,811 in the prior week. The total rig count — a measure of both oil and gas rigs — declined by the largest amount since 2009.
The first week of the new year hit Texas drillers the hardest. The state’s rig count fell by 30 rigs to 810, twice as much as the week prior. Texas has seen a 10 percent loss from the high of 905 rigs in late November and now has fewer rigs drilling than the 825 the state had for the same period last year.
North Dakota lost seven rigs to a total of 162.
Rig counts are widely expected to fall following a more than 50 percent crash in crude prices since this summer. Producers across the industry have pared back 2015 drilling budgets — and the number of rigs they expect to have under contract — in order to shore up finances as revenue from selling crude oil falls.
Praveen Narra, an analyst with Raymond James, said that his firm expects as many 850 rigs to come off the market this year.
Time to buy oil?
World demand is not going away.
Too early.
Wait until WTI is around 35, maybe even 20.
It’ll be months at least.
Active rigs down 50% by end of the year would be devastating for the whole energy sector.
I hope they are wrong.
T. Boone Pickens said they’d be down by 2/3rds in the upcoming year.
Steve is home most of the time now because of this.
They’re not. We’re done here in Texas. Shutting down faster than possible.
Rig count less than 1000 sucks. That is not many jobs, etc.
That was my first tought when I read stuff like this.
The Oil Workers and their Support Crews and Their Support Crews are effected.
Trickle Down works that way too :/
I hope he is find work on the side.
Or OTHER things to do.... ;) (which I think he has)
Hee hee hee!!!
Again, we are seeing gloom and doom predicted because of low oil prices. In the first sentence of the second paragraph, I see we have a decline of “ rigs searching or drilling for oil”.
What I did not see was anything about number of producing wells being capped as I saw back in the 80s & 90s.
To me this means we will have a surplus of oil for a while. When that surplus starts to get low, the number of “rigs searching or drilling for oil” will start to rise again. Probably with ever newer technology.
Where are you going to store it and at what cost?
Har har
Some are doing that, but the supply of tankers is limited.
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