I didn't know whether to post the article until I read this:
Investment, though, may not mean more rigs. What producers can net through individual rigs is a more important measure of the health of the Permian Basin’s oil and gas industry than the rig count, Leach said. Case in point: The rig count peaked last year at more than 500 rigs in West Texas and Southeastern New Mexico and now stands around 430 as operators shift from drilling vertical to horizontal wells.I've opined for at least a year that stacking rigs in North Dakota is not a sign that the Bakken boom is ending. The number of rigs is an important data point but cannot stand alone. As the drilling gets more efficient AND more effective, fewer rigs are needed for the same production. And, of course, there is the problem that production is outrunning takeaway capacity.
Again, it is not just the rig count, but a) the type of rigs; b) well design to include completion (fracking); c) location; d) location; e) location; f) pad drilling; g) infrastructure support/takeaway capacity; h) favorable business/tax environment; i) favorable/reasonable environmental/regulatory impact.
All things being equal, of course, the more rigs, the more production but all things are never equal.
By the way, how long has the Permian been producing oil? If you said "since 1971" you would be only 5ifty years off. The Permian has been producing oil since 1921.
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A Note To The Granddaughters
Nothing to do with the Bakken, but #3 in 1960, almost forty years after the Permian started producing oil:
.... and David Lynch's iconic use of the soundtrack, forty-some years later:
