Infill Thoughts

For the first time in more than two years, it feels pretty good to be a North American land drilling contractor right about now. Beyond the headline rig count increases we’ve all heard of, other important industry metrics are moving upwards as well. The North American land drillers are the tip of the spear …

On Schlumberger’s conference call Friday morning, CEO Paal Kibsgaard made one central theme very clear. He is preparing his organization for growth again. Conversations with almost every Schlumberger customer on pricing increases have begun. Outside of Asia Pacific, Kibsgaard sees tender shoots of recovery sprouting in every market across the globe. To read …

Much has been said lately about deepwater lagging onshore in any sort of recovery. Rightly so, particularly for new drilling. But this doesn’t mean deepwater is dead in the water. Instead, it means the recovery could look quite a bit different this time. We got some clues about the equipment mix shift …

On Wednesday, Halliburton kicked off earnings season with a tidy report that boosted the stock by 5%. In other posts, we covered our key takeaways from the press release and a significant tone shift that has implications for future upcycles. Seven key observations about the competitive landscape are discussed here, but first we pause for …

An important tone shift in how Halliburton addressed investors Wednesday morning foreshadows a different type of recovery ahead. Reading between the lines, we’ve dubbed the upcycle of the future a “roll up your sleeves” recovery. What will oilfield companies have to do to achieve prior KPIs in the recovery ahead? We discuss that and more… To …

Recent financing news from several large offshore drillers suggests that it is becoming more difficult for the battered sector to access the capital markets. With a wave of credit instruments approaching maturity over the next 3-5 years, the sector’s collateral ($100bn worth of newbuild rigs) is increasingly economically impaired (paybacks periods are …

Saipem won 30 years of new land rig backlog in Saudi Arabia today. In the US, we estimate about 28 rig-years of land drilling backlog have been added in total since the bottom. We compare the Saudi and US drilling markets, and estimate backlog created in the young and tender recovery. …

A quick round-up of three stories flying below the radar that we find important lessons in: i) a leading indicator of Norwegian mature field development just plummeted, ii) H&P just paid an injured rig hand $72mm, and iii) Patterson-UTI is finding it easy to return idle land rigs to work. …

Latin American deepwater exploration and development is largely driven by the two large NOCs in the region. Here lately, these NOCs have been slamming the brakes, particularly in Brazil where Petrobras is trying to recover from scandal that rivals Enron. Both NOCs are pruning their rig portfolios, resulting in negative demand for Latin American floaters. …

In news from Rowan Thursday afternoon, we observe drilling contract negotiations taking a different kind of turn. The usual dayrate, duration, and specification sticking points that operators and contractors haggle over are expanding as deal-makers seek creative solutions to downturn problems. Exclusivity is being granted by an operator in exchange for more favorable early-termination release. …