Rig Counts Fall in December (BHI)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Baker Hughes Incorporated (NYSE:BHI) released its monthly rig count report this morning. Compared with November counts, drilling rigs in North America are off about 9%. Compared with December 2007, North American rigs are down by just 28, about 1%.

Rig counts internationally have grown since the end of 2007, but havebeen falling steadily since mid-2008. The pullback will put pressure onrevenues at companies like Baker Hughes and other oil field servicescompanies.

The recent jump in crude prices was due almost entirely to fear ofsupply disruption caused by the conflict between Israel and Hamas, aswell as OPEC’s announced production cuts. But the reality of the globaleconomic slowdown, which has cut and will continue to cut demand foroil, has taken back virtually all the fear premium.

Lower rig counts lead to layoffs in the oil field services industry,and lower profits all around. None of this is likely to change untileconomic conditions improve.

Paul Ausick
January 9, 2009

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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