Fewer rigs in the Panhandle

Article

By Lucas Jefferson
Friday, December 12, 2008 at 4:28 p.m.


The staggering drop in crude oil prices has caused many rigs here in the Panhandle to shut down for the time being.

Over the past six months we've had as many as ninety-five rigs running, now there are only 84 in operation.

That has a big impact on the money that flows into our economy. The average rig worker makes two hundred bucks a day, there's about 18 thousand dollars per day, based on ten rigs, that isn't going into our economy.

That's more than half a million dollars per month.

Higher crude prices make exploration more feasible for producers, as Executive Vice President of the Panhandle Producers and Royalty Owners Association, Wayne Hughes said, “We can design drill programs that involve the use of a drilling rig over four or five sites much more economically and much more realistically when the price gets in the seventy dollar range. That's where it's comfortable for us.”

Keep in mind those numbers we are just for the rig workers, that doesn't take into account the myriad of other jobs which relate to the oil business.

Hughes also told us that he is optimistic that over the next couple of months crude prices will start going back up.

When that happens we should see growth in rig numbers come back to the Panhandle.