New Mexico may be starting to surpass West Texas as the main focus of shale drilling, with rigs decamping from familiar areas in the Permian to other less drilled locales. While the rig count continues to fall overall, down roughly 20 percent from a recent peak last year, the rigs are also being shuffled between and within shale basins. The southeastern corner of New Mexico has emerged as one of the more favored areas of drilling. New Mexico’s portion of the Delaware basin (a part of the Permian basin) has actually seen a year-on-year increase in rigs. “In November 2016, Reeves County, Texas, within the Delaware Basin took over from Midland County as the US county with the most active oil rigs. Reeves maintained that distinction for 149 consecutive weeks,” Standard Chartered analysts wrote in a recent report. “[H]owever, it has lost it in the latest data.” Reeves County […]