Idle Rambling On A Monday Morning -- June 10, 2019

Rig counts are meaningless (don't take that out of context).

In round numbers, I would suppose, North Dakota is producing about 1.4 million bopd.

The last several months the number of active rigs has been running right around 65 +/- a couple of rigs.

But look back in June, 2016, 28 rigs.

	6/10/2019	06/10/2018	06/10/2017	06/10/2016	06/10/2015
Active Rigs	64	61	52	28	82

How much oil was North Dakota producing back in March, 2016? 1.1 million bopd.

March, 2016:

• active rigs: 32
• DUCs: 920
• inactive wells: 1,523
• total: 2,443
• oil production: 1,111,421 bopd (final)

March, 2019 (most recent data)

• active rigs: 64
• DUCs: 968
• inactive wells: 1,697
• total: 2,665
• oil production: 1,390,138 (preliminary; final will be out this month)

I don't see a whole lot of difference between 1.4 million bopd and 1.1 million bopd -- well, not at least compared to the number of active rigs: 64 vs 32. And 32 rigs was not even the record low for the Bakken boom. By June, 2016, it was down to 28.

Houston Chronicle on rig counts, back on December 21, 2018.