Horizontal drilling and completion technologies have revolutionized the oil and gas industry in recent years. Resource plays, including shale plays (the Barnett, Eagle Ford, or Marcellus, for example) or tight reservoir plays that were originally developed with limited success using vertical drilling (examples include the Bakken, Mississippi Lime and Cleveland Sand) are highly sought-after in the A&D market due to the increased recoverability and decreased risk of horizontal development.

Coupled with the shift to oil/liquids-weighted assets, these trends over the past three years have driven an increase in the number ...