Monday, April 2, 2012

The Pause That Refreshes? -- Seeking Alpha -- The Bakken, North Dakota, USA

This writer says that once the Bakken sees increased takeaway and once fracking costs come down, the Bakken is headed for another spurt in visible activity.
Once the infrastructure problem is reined in and crude and service prices stabilize, get ready for full scale Bakken development: rig counts north of 250, and more major oil companies moving into the State.
"250" has been bandied about for some time. The number of rigs is not a particularly useful metric to judge productivity. Bigger rigs and the increasing number of mega-multi-wells pads are changing the landscape. The best metric: month-over-month and year-over-year oil production. 

The writer's use of "capitalization" in interesting.

Oh, by the way, speaking of rigs: 206 active drilling rigs today -- one short of the all-time high of 207.