BLOOMBERG.COM

Call it a rig-less recovery.

 

As oil prices have climbed almost 50 percent in little more than six months, the weekly Baker Hughes tally of drilling rigs has stayed remarkably still. Normally, you’d expect the rigs to return to the field as producers flush with added cash looked to boost output.

 

But shale companies are managing to do more with less, in a recovery that has seen U.S. production continue to climb even without the leading indicator of added drilling. These days, the weekly rig count figure, which had become a focal point in the initial months of the downturn, is now increasingly irrelevant, as forecasters turn to a bigger toolbox of stats, metrics and gauges to get an idea of what shale drillers are up to...Read more>