Eddie Blanchard of Saginaw is an
independent drilling contractor.
He hires his rigs and crews out
to major oil companies, wildcatters,
anyone looking for oil.
But this half million dollar rig has been
sitting idle for six months.
Interest alone costs 200 dollars
a day, five or six.
Blanchot says no one wants to hire out
his rig.
He can't afford another 50000 thousand
dollars to do the drilling himself.
Get kind of discouraged and even tried to
sell the drilling rig and
don't seem to have much luck in doing
that. I got my life savings tied up and
they're saying and just sitting here,
why? What are the people telling you?
Well, people just
say that they don't know what the
government's going to do. They want to
hold off on doing any
investing in drilling and what have you.
Uh, we haven't had any
any, uh, people even come close
to giving us a shout out to work.
And we're dilema.
We don't know what's going
on.
Blanchard says he's not the only drilling
contractor with stacked iron, that
there are others in the same fix.
And he says how much longer he can keep
it stacked depends on how much longer
his creditors will carry him.
Bill Hix, The Texas News in Saginaw. Yes.