The Land Rig Newsletter team acknowledged the first birthday of The Unconventional Drilling Report by comparing the July 14, 2011, issue with the first UDR they published on July 15, 2010. Among the comps:

The summary rig counts for the shale, tight sands, and coalbed methane plays were little changed from a year ago at this time. But some of the individual plays have changed dramatically:  Haynesville down by 59, Eagle Ford up by 104, Barnett down by 28, and the liquids-rich DJ Basin more than doubled while the other three, more gas-prone, tight sands plays all dropped sharply. Oil-directed rigs in the shales and tight sands were up by 88; gas rigs were down by 64.
Rigs drilling horizontal wells jumped by 72, while vertical rigs fell by more than half.

What will the UDR metrics will look like a year from now? First, there will be a very big increase in summary rig counts—starting with the July 28 issue, when the team rolls out data for a large number of new plays—all liquids-focused.

The drilling industry is abuzz over what The Land Rig Newsletter team describes as a “clumsily transparent hatchet job” by the New York Times on operators’ shale reserves estimation and accounting methods. Writing in the latest issue of The Unconventional Drilling Report, the team contends that “despite the somewhat lurid insinuations about ‘a Ponzi scheme’ and ‘another Enron,’ we don’t think this will gain much traction with serious investors or lenders—and thus don’t see a significant impact on drilling.”

The LRNL team goes on to note that Barnett Shale gas production has quintupled to more than 5 Bcfd since 2004. And since the peak of 180 in September 2008, the Barnett rig count had dropped by more than 100 by 1Q 2011. Yet Barnett gas production climbed by 13% during that collapse. Average Barnett production per well slipped only 3% from September 2008 to December 2010 (latest data). Looking at the bigger picture, Barnett per-well production has jumped from an average 305 Mcfd in 2004 to an average 385 Mcfd in 2010.

On the surface, drilling in the leading resource plays has all the markings of having entered a lull period. The unconventional rig count has been relatively unchanged for three consecutive quarters, and utilization has been fairly stable near 80% since early February. However, there are serious riptides underneath this relative calm, The Land Rig Newsletter team warns in the latest issue of The Unconventional Drilling Report.

The strongest Q1 currents were felt in the Eagle Ford, where the rig count surged 25% vs. Q4, and the Bakken, where the count was 15% higher. The Barnett, down 12%, and the Haynesville, down 7.5%, provided countervailing currents. Rig markets are likely to remain tight in the Eagle Ford, Bakken, and DJ basins throughout Q2. More generally, the LRNL team expects growth in oil-directed drilling to be in the double-digits in Q2 as growth in liquids-focused plays expands. Also, the LRNL team expects rig counts in dry gas areas, such as the Haynesville and the northeast window of the Marcellus, to extend recent declines during the quarter.

From The Unconventional Drilling Report with data as of September 17, 2010:

The Barnett is experiencing a bit of a renaissance as the rig count quietly climbed to a recent high of 90 units. The latest increase came from Chesapeake, which put = another four rigs to work. Given the nearly full utilization rate in the “core” area, additional near-term growth would likely come from the “oily” window.