The Oil Collapse Isn't Stopping America's Investment in Energy
Spending on equipment to extract oil is still rising
A worker prepares to lift drills by pulley to the main floor of Endeavor Energy Resources LP's Big Dog Drilling Rig 22 in the Permian basin outside of Midland, Texas, U.S., on Friday, Dec. 12, 2014.
Brittany Sowacke/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
After an epic collapse in crude prices, U.S. oil companies still aren't blinking. Investment in drilling rigs and wells actually improved in the closing months of 2014.
Outlays for rigs and wells climbed at an 8.9 percent pace in the fourth quarter after an 8.3 percent increase from July through September, today's Commerce Department report on gross domestic product showed. As you can see from the chart below, those figures are a slight slowdown from numbers in the first half of 2014, but are definitely no halt.