Monday Macro View: Are Frac Spreads Outpacing Rigs?

Frac spread count climbed to 205 this week, up five from the prior week and 29 above the level recorded 52 weeks ago. Frac job count rose to 248, up five week over week and 44 higher than a year earlier. Rig count reached 580, up seven and 36 above its year ago reading, per the latest Baker Hughes rig count. All three measures advanced together for consecutive weeks, a synchronized move that tends to signal a fleet rebuilding capacity rather than making an isolated adjustment. Primary Vision's research has found that meaningful, durable activity gains tend to arrive only after crude prices hold in an elevated range for roughly three consecutive months. Brent spiked well above 100 dollars a barrel earlier this year before easing back into the low to mid 70s more recently, per the EIA's most recent Short Term Energy Outlook, a stretch of materially elevated pricing long enough to satisfy that threshold on its own terms even after the spot price came off its highs. The frac spread and frac job gains showing up now look consistent with operators responding to that pricing window with the usual lag between a price signal reaching the field and a crew getting mobilized on location.

The more telling story this week sits in the frac spread count itself rather than in rigs. National frac spread count bottomed below 160 active crews in early 2025 and this week's print of 205 continues a climb off that low running for several consecutive weeks. Because frac spreads are the direct input into completions and near term production, that recovery is a cleaner read on where output is headed than any single week of rig additions. The nuance worth holding onto is that rig count is only part of the story, and the healthier part is happening elsewhere. Rigs measure new drilling, not completions, so a rising rig count alone says little about how quickly wells become flowing production. Frac spread and frac job counts rising in tandem with rigs, rather than lagging behind them, is the more reassuring signal, since it means completions crews are keeping pace with drilling rather than letting a drilled but uncompleted well inventory quietly build up.

That last point matters more this cycle than in prior ones. The national inventory of drilled but uncompleted wells has been on a structural multi year decline since its 2020 peak, per the EIA's Drilling Productivity Report, leaving operators far less of a completions backlog to lean on than they had coming out of past downturns. That thinner cushion is also the backdrop for a longer horizon data point worth flagging rather than treating as this week's news: U.S. Steel's late June approval of a 475 million dollar investment in a new heat treatment line at its Fairfield Tubular Operations, aimed at oil country tubular goods demand from the Permian, Eagle Ford, Haynesville and Appalachia basins. A steelmaker committing capital against a 2029 completion date is a bet on sustained multi year completions demand, and it reads more plausibly against a market with a shrinking DUC buffer than in a cycle with ample slack to fall back on.

None of this changes Primary Vision's constructive view of US completion activity. The frac spread count, frac job count and rig count all rose together this week, the price backdrop that historically precedes durable gains has been in place for months, and the thinner DUC cushion means this cycle carries more signal than the last. The honest caveat is timing. Whether this week's gains mark a sustained multi quarter build or a more measured pace of additions depends on how quickly completions crews keep pace with the rigs now coming back online.