After following the weekly production statistics avidly for some months and initially being smugly pleased by the data saying exactly what I wanted to hear, I then became completely befuddled by the data saying the opposite. I had almost reached the conclusion that the weekly production data wasn’t worth paying attention to.

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In today’s gloomy oil-price news cycle, it’s sometimes easy to overlook the fact that if not for the advent of hydraulic fracturing coupled with horizontal drilling – the Unconventional Revolution – the world would be a much different place. Things in the oil (and stock) market are certainly not super positive today, but without the unconventionals we would likely be looking at well over $100 barrel oil and would be in a massive bidding war with China and India to secure supply; the Middle East would likely be accumulating and centralizing more wealth and power rather than fracturing apart into sectarian in-fighting; and the ongoing shift from coal to cleaner-burning natural gas would not be as promising.

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The U.S. land rig count fell 17 to 590 and the horizontal land rig count fell 13 to 487.

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