Rigs

Hercules Offshore Inc. last week emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, but the hard work continues after CEO John Rynd said activity in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico (GOM) was “lower today than at any time since the early days of the offshore drilling industry.”

Halcon Resources Corp. is unofficially planning to keep three rigs deployed in the Williston Basin and a portion of the Eagle Ford Shale in 2016, and it could cut capital expenditures (capex) by 25%, even as it set some new drilling records during 3Q2015.

The United States saw a net loss of four rigs in the most recent county by Baker Hughes Inc. released Friday Nov. 6. That’s a slowing of the decline rate seen in the previous week, but indications are that the count will continue to drop in the weeks ahead.

The pace of decline in the number of active U.S. drilling rigs has slowed a bit, according to the most recent count, but there is still further to fall if the comments of producer and service company executives are a guide.

When Wile E. Coyote falls off a cliff, he hits a branch or two on the way down. The U.S. rig count did that last week, but now it’s plummeting again, according to Baker Hughes Inc.

On Friday Baker Hughes Inc. said the U.S. rig count had fallen 12 to land at 775, just 40% of its year-ago level.

The U.S. oil and gas business is bad and getting worse, with the pullback in drilling to continue well into next year, Nabors Industries Ltd. CEO Tony Petrello said this week.

Recent declines in the weekly U.S. rig count ended Friday with a splat rather than a bounce. The Baker Hughes Inc. count of active U.S. oil and natural gas rigs was static at 787 units.

U.S. natural gas drilling activity is but 58% of what it was a year ago, according to the latest rig census from Baker Hughes Inc., which was released Friday.