Today, I counted 13.
And then this from Occidental's 4Q11 transcript:
In the Midcontinent and other operations, we plan to spend about 14% of our total capital. In the Williston, we have increased our acreage in 2011 from 204,000 acres to 277,000 acres. We expect that our rig count will be about 6 at the end of 2012. Additional capital that could reasonably be deployed here has been shifted to higher-return opportunities in California and the Permian. This may also encourage Bakken well costs to decline.Maybe someone can clarify that. I suppose the "13" to "15" wells listed as OXY USA rigs could be contracted and the "6" that the transcript refers to are the company's own rigs, but I certainly interpret that paragraph to say that OXY is re-deploying to areas (like California) with higher return potential.
Maybe I'm misreading something. But OXY has always been focused on California.
This comes on top of the CHK story I just posted.
On the other hand, COP seems to like the Permian and the Bakken:
So now I'll shift to our progress in growing our liquids-rich shale business in North America. That's the Eagle Ford, the Bakken, the Permian and the Cardium plays. First, at Eagle Ford, we are currently running 16 rigs in the play. We expect to maintain a 16 rig count average and drill about 180 wells in 2012. Production in late December was around 50,000 BOE per day, and we continue to see some impacts from curtailments related to infrastructure constraints as a result of the higher well volumes and the increasing liquid content and just our ongoing development activity. We would anticipate that average production from the Eagle Ford should grow to around 100,000 BOE per day by the end of 2012. In the Permian, in the Bakken, we are running a total of 12 -- 10 rigs and expect to increase this by as much as 50% during 2012. The fourth quarter production at the Permian and Bakken averaged 50,000 BOE per day and 18,000 BOE per day, respectively.
