Somebody who’s a lot better with a calculator than we are did some number crunching and came up with a truly astounding result.

The new pipelines being built in the area will require 45 new drilling rigs to fill them to capacity.  We’re currently running at about 50.

Historically, the Marcellus/Utica play has hosted around 130 rigs or so at any given time, with the highest numbers being between 2010 and 2014.  Since 2014, of course, rig counts have been dropping like mad.

Since it’s becoming hard to find frack crews, it seems like it may be a little difficult to find enough drilling rig crews.  Frack crews and drilling rig crews went through the same downturn, got fired, and went a long time waiting for the call to come back to work.  A lot of them have gone to find more reliable work in other industries.

However, for West Virginia mineral and royalty owners, the important thing to think about is how this is going to affect leasing.  It seems that in the next few months there is probably going to be an increase in leasing which is going to continue for a couple years.  When that happens, prices typically go up and the terms that you can request get much better.

It looks like boom times may be coming again.

Of course, this is us looking through a crystal ball.  Don’t go betting the farm on the accuracy of this prediction.  All kinds of things affect leasing activity, from local geology to international geopolitics.  We sure like the way things look right now, though.