Find out more and how to subscribe. An investor and long time friend of mine had purchased a position in the company from the creditors and asked me to get involved. First and foremost, continue to select and develop our current and future management team and strive to develop an institutionalized chemistry in that management team. Probably more important than anything else is safety, which is a direct investment in people. We strive to make sure that anybody who sends their sons, daughters, or spouses to work with us can rest assure that they will be taken care of.
Further safety is a proxy for an efficient operation.
It is impossible to be organized and efficient and still have accidents. Our next priority is to capitalize on the strong North American natural gas market through our market-leading position in the United States. This level of remaining capacity puts us in an ideal position to meet that demand. For example, in late 1997 at the peak of activity in the previous cycle we had around 200 rigs working in the lower 48 states. At the bottom of the cycle in mid-1999, we had declined to approximately 73 rigs working and by the end of this year we expect to have something close to 300 rigs working there.