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Precision Drilling Corporation
Precision Drilling provides onshore drilling rigs and related services that oil and natural gas companies use to drill wells.
Precision Drilling is a contract driller. It owns the big, expensive rigs and the crews that run them, and oil and gas producers pay it to drill their wells. It works mainly in North America — the United States and Canada — and also has a smaller operation in the Middle East. The company doesn't own the oil or the gas being pulled out of the ground; it just supplies the muscle that bores the hole.
The core of the business is land drilling. Precision's rigs are hired by exploration and production companies that would rather rent the equipment and expertise than own it themselves. The customer pays a daily rate for the rig plus whatever extra gear and services it uses, so the money flows in as long as crews are working and rigs stay busy. When oil prices are high and producers are drilling a lot, daily rates go up and rigs are easy to keep booked. When prices crash, the phone stops ringing and the same rigs sit idle while still costing money. That cycle is the whole story of the business — it lives and dies by producers' spending on new wells. Precision also sells a range of add-on services that make drilling faster and safer, including directional drilling and equipment rentals, and it builds and runs a technology system called Alpha that helps customers drill wells more efficiently. These services and the Alpha platform are how the company tries to stand out from a crowded field of drillers and win more money per rig. Its main publicly traded competitors include Helmerich & Payne and Nabors Industries, plus a long list of private drilling contractors.
Based in Calgary, Precision is one of the bigger land drillers in North America and a meaningful player internationally. Because it must keep spending on rig upgrades and new equipment even in bad years, it has carried heavy debt at times, and management has focused on paying that down and returning cash to shareholders when the cycle allows. The honest picture: this is a cyclical, capital-hungry business with real operating leverage — great when drilling booms, painful when it stalls.
Saved answer · last researched 14 Nov 2026