{"id":5071,"date":"2015-01-30T19:34:52","date_gmt":"2015-01-31T00:34:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=5071"},"modified":"2015-01-30T19:34:52","modified_gmt":"2015-01-31T00:34:52","slug":"oil-rig-count-plunges-most-ever-oil-price-soars-inventories-too-catch-falling-knife-get-fingers-sliced-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=5071","title":{"rendered":"Oil Rig Count Plunges Most Ever, Oil Price Soars, Inventories Too: Catch Falling Knife, Get Fingers Sliced Off"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2015\/01\/30\/oil-rig-count-plunges-most-ever-oil-price-soars-inventories-too-catch-falling-knife-get-fingers-sliced-off\/\" target=\"_blank\">Oil Rig Count Plunges Most Ever, Oil Price Soars, Inventories Too: Catch Falling Knife, Get Fingers Sliced Off<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>The oil industry is dead-serious when it talks about slashing operating cost and capital expenditures. They have to. Preserving cash is suddenly a priority, after years when money was growing on trees.<\/p>\n<p>In the US, the cost cutting has reached frenetic levels. One place where it shows up on a weekly basis is the number of rigs actively drilling for oil. And that rig count dropped by 94 to 1,223 in the latest week, as\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/phx.corporate-ir.net\/phoenix.zhtml?c=79687&amp;p=irol-reportsother\" target=\"_blank\">Baker Hughes<\/a>\u00a0reported today. A phenomenal plunge, by far the worst\u00a0<em>ever<\/em>. In January, the rig count crashed by 276, the most ever for a calendar month. That\u2019s 18.4%! the rig count is now down 386 from its peak on October 10, by\u00a0<em>nearly a quarter<\/em>!<\/p>\n<p>And yet, it\u2019s\u00a0<em>still<\/em>\u00a0just the beginning. The chart shows the breathless fracking-for-oil boom that started after the financial crisis. Not included are the rigs drilling for natural gas. That fracking boom had started years earlier and ended in a glut and total price destruction that continues to this day (<a href=\"http:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/US-rig-count_1988_2015-01-16gas.png\" target=\"_blank\">chart<\/a>). Note the two-month\u00a0cliff-dive, the worst ever. During the financial crisis, the oil rig count fell 60% from peak to trough. If this oil bust plays out the same way, the rig count would drop to 642! The bloodletting in the industry would be enormous.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"image-anchor\" href=\"http:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/US-rig-count_1988_2015-01-30oil.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11708\" src=\"http:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/US-rig-count_1988_2015-01-30oil.png\" alt=\"US-rig-count_1988_2015-01-30=oil\" width=\"550\" height=\"438\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Oil Rig Count Plunges Most Ever, Oil Price Soars, Inventories Too: Catch Falling Knife, Get Fingers Sliced Off The oil industry is dead-serious when it talks about slashing operating cost and capital expenditures. They have to. Preserving cash is suddenly a priority, after years when money was growing on trees. In the US, the cost [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[588,595,2121,596,723,798],"class_list":["post-5071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-oil","tag-oil-production","tag-oil-rig-count","tag-oil-supply","tag-shale-oil","tag-tight-oil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5071"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5072,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5071\/revisions\/5072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}