Tag Archives: drilling

It’s been a busy 24 hours. Since Wednesday morning, a dozen upstream management teams have provided business outlooks via quarterly conference calls. While drinking from this information firehose, we’ve been logging the highlights. In this post, we dissect the eight most interesting things we took away for the oilfield business at …

For the past six months, Baker Hughes has publicly rethought its involvement in the pressure pumping business. Now a material transaction is possible before year-end. The initiative is part of the big push underway by all of the Big 3 oil service companies to lighten their asset bases. Said another way, the Big 3 …

As we initiate our weekly rig count update here at Infill Thinking, it is nice to be writing about growth again for the first time in two years. Since the May 27, 2016 bottom, the US land rig count is up 154 rigs or +41%. Recent growth has been largely driven …

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. There’s a …

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. …

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. …