Active Drilling Rigs Creeping Up -- Back to 200 -- One Short of the Record -- The Bakken, North Dakota, USA

Contrary to what folks might think, I have no dog in this fight: I have no opinion regarding the number of rigs in the state.

I follow it simply as a metric which has some relationship to the degree of activity in the Bakken.

A couple of things to keep in mind:

• as rigs get more powerful and crews become more efficient, less rigs are needed to do the same amount of work
• the infrastructure needs to catch up before significantly more wells can be drilled
• the fracking backlog continues to be a problem; and if they don't frack in January/February, the backlog will worsen

So, rigs are probably a better metric to use for tracking how many workers there are in the state. The number of permits granted on a daily basis may be a better metric for tracking future activity.

Counter-point to the above points, sent to me by Don:

• Maybe less rigs needed for current work (as they get more powerful and more efficient) but new prospects in the Spearfish (Bottineau) and more drilling in Montana will push rig count up (remember, some industry observers suggest 250 rigs in the Bakken by next summer)

And speaking of the Spearfish/Bottineau, I'm actually getting more excited with the Madison formation; particularly what Whiting is doing in the Big Stick oil field in Billings County, southwestern North Dakota