Active Rig Count dropping like a rock

[dan_s]

Weekly Rig Count from BHI: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zht ... portsother

For the week ending December 29, 2014:
United States onshore active rig count drops 35 to 1840
Canada's onshore active rig count drops 135 to 256
Gulf of Mexico is unchanged at 56 (remember these are all on long-term contracts)

“We should see the rig count going down at least through the end of the first quarter as a reaction to the low oil prices,” James Williams, an economist at WTRG Economics, an energy-research firm in London, Ark., told Bloomberg News. “By mid-year, we should see measurable impacts on production.”

Analysts at Credit Suisse agreed. “We think it will fall every week for the next three months,” they wrote in a paper on the US rig count. “We expect the market to lose at least 200 vertical and 200 horizontal rigs, and it could easily be more than that.”

Based on the big cuts that I'm seeing in CapEx budgets, I think the U.S. onshore rig count will drop by 700-800 by the end of April. - Dan

http://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/L ... -Down.html