Baker Hughes Axes their Quarterly Well Count Report :-(
In July 2013 Baker Hughes, the third largest oilfield services company in the U.S. that’s being forced to merge with Halliburton, the second largest oilfield services company, started a useful new quarterly report called the well count report (see BH Launches Well Count Report, Perfect Compliment to Rig Count). You know Baker Hughes as the company that releases weekly and monthly rig count data. Just yesterday our lead story was the latest rig count stats from BH (see BIG Decrease in BH Rig Counts, Including Marcellus/Utica). BH has counted and reported the number of active rigs drilling for the past 70+ years. With rigs becoming more efficient–fewer of them drilling more wells–it made sense to add a report that would track the number of new wells spud, or new wells started, in a given period of time. That was the quarterly well report. Unfortunately BH has just announced they are immediately discontinuing the well report, less than two years after they launched it…
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MDN editor Jim Willis attended the Platts Global Energy Outlook Forum yesterday in New York City. (New York at Christmas time is truly a sight to behold.) One of the more interesting things Jim learned was from a purely off-the-cuff remark made by John Hill, vice chairman and managing director of First Reserve, one of the world’s largest energy-focused private equity and infrastructure investment firms. John was talking about the downward pressure energy companies are making on oilfield services companies–like Schulmberger and Halliburton and Baker Hughes–forcing them to discount their prices. In the case of Halliburton, which is buying Baker Hughes (see 
That was fast. Last week MDN told you the scuttlebutt that the second largest oilfield services company in the U.S., Halliburton, was “in talks” to buy the third largest oilfield services company in the U.S., Baker Hughes (see 
The biggest news to hit the oil and gas industry in recent memory happened yesterday. The financial press lit up (and ran HUNDREDS of stories) about the leak/announcement/news that oilfield services company Halliburton is “in talks” to buy out rival Baker Hughes. The largest oilfield services company in the U.S. (and in the world) is Schlumberger, followed by Halliburton (again, in both the world and in the U.S.). Baker Hughes (BH) is the fifth largest oilfield services company in the world, but #3 in the U.S. Halliburton’s market capitalization this morning–price per share times outstanding number of shares–is $47.65 billion. Baker Hughes’ market cap is $26.59 billion, up $5 billion since yesterday afternoon when the news broke. Combined, the two companies would be worth $74.24 billion and employ (if there are no layoffs) 144,000 people. Schlumberger’s market cap, by comparison, is $127.62 billion with 126,000 employees. Both Halliburton and BH are heavily involved in providing all sorts of services (rigs, fracking, logistics, etc.) for exploration & production companies in both the Marcellus and Utica, as well as every other major shale play in the U.S. AND in every conventional play around the world…
Baker Hughes is the world’s fifth largest oilfield services company. Schlumberger and Halliburton are numbers one and two, respectively. Oilfield services companies provide drilling equipment and yes, even fracking equipment (and fracking fluids) that power the shale revolution. Baker Hughes, with a large presence in the Marcellus/Utica, has just donated (for the second year in a row) $100,000 to Susan G. Komen®, the world’s leading breast cancer organization, to help in the effort to find a cure for breast cancer. Anyone alive over the age of 30 almost certainly has a relative or friend who is or has been afflicted by this disease. Doing what we can to fight it is something we all can get behind. But because some wacko anti-drillers make wild claims that fracking fluids “cause cancer”–even though fracking fluids contain many of the same chemicals in the stuff under your kitchen sink–some lib groups (incredibly) oppose the donation and efforts by Baker Hughes, saying it is blood money and “pink washing” the fracking industry…