Activity

The United States saw a net gain of five oil and five natural gas rigs during the week just ended. More than twice as many oil rigs are operating as there were one year ago, and natural gas rigs are up by 90% from their year-ago tally.

When rigs return to the energy patch, it doesn’t just mean more oil and natural gas production, they bring with them increased economic activity to the regions where they operate, as the nation’s Federal Reserve banks have noted recently.

Oil and gas operators in Texas, southern New Mexico and northern Louisiana continued to “git ‘er done” during the first three months of this year, with energy activity stronger for the second consecutive quarter, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas said Wednesday.

Diamondback Energy Inc.’s Permian Basin production climbed 38% year/year and was 16% higher sequentially during the fourth quarter as the company raised more rigs in the Southern Delaware.

Energy firm activity accelerated in the final three months of 2016 and the “future activity outlook also improved considerably” across the Midcontinent, the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City (Fed) said Friday.

Calgary-based Precision Drilling Corp. is seeing activity pick up across all of its U.S. operating regions, with the Permian Basin in West Texas “getting the most attention,” CEO Kevin Neveu told analysts during a 3Q2016 earnings call.

Though often overshadowed by its Permian cousin to the south, the Anadarko Basin, with its stacked reservoirs, is generating plenty of buzz in its own right heading into 2017.

Halliburton Co., the largest pressure pumper and completions expert in North America, swung to an unexpected profit in the third quarter, driven by “relentlessly managing costs” and a slightly improving market, CEO Dave Lesar said Wednesday.

For the first time in two years, oil and natural gas operators reported a “modest increase” during the third quarter, according to a survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, which serves Colorado, Kansas, the western third of Missouri, Nebraska, the northern half of New Mexico, Oklahoma and Wyoming.