taking care of business, page-7

Oil rig count in US shale oil plays down 61 from last week to 1421. If this downward momentum is maintained, it won't be long before rig count drops to 1000 and below.
Lots of oil rigs are still under contract but in a few months many will be out of this onerous contracts. Oil rig count will keep on dropping until oil price recovers to a level say US$70 that will allow the shale oil companies to make a reasonable profit. There are also reports that oil companies paying $10m per rig termination fee just to get out of contracted oil rig. My view is oil companies would be better off leaving the oil on the ground even if the oil well has been drilled. They can then sell oil Aug 15 Futures and get a higher oil price. At the same time they help fix this oil supply glut issue.