This week the signal got sharper — literally. ROGII rebuilt the geosteering picture, Aramco and Emerson moved corrosion monitoring from clipboard to continuous data stream, and a fresh market read put a $8.35B figure on the measurement layer itself. The rig count rose too — and the growth came from directional rigs, the ones that live or die on real-time placement.
This Week On The Rig Floor
Well Placement & Software • World Oil · June 1
ROGII ships StarSteer 2026.1 — richer geosteering, 3D geomodeling and well-attribute management
ROGII released StarSteer 2026.1 with a new well-attributes management system to import, organize and visualize well metadata inside the application, plus expanded 3D geomodeling — property visualization, slice-view, and the ability to generate logs along well trajectories from geomodel properties. The update adds layout-sharing for geosteering teams, improved seismic-visualization performance and lower memory use. ROGII frames the release as helping operators accelerate decision-making during drilling by strengthening subsurface interpretation and well placement.
Why it matters: Geosteering is where the bit meets the model in real time. The unglamorous wins here — cleaner metadata, faster redraws, shared layouts — are exactly what let a steering team correct a trajectory before it walks out of the pay zone, not after.
Read on World Oil →
Digital Monitoring • Oilfield Technology · June 1
Aramco and Emerson to co-develop continuous, digital corrosion monitoring
Emerson announced a research-and-development collaboration with Saudi Aramco to digitalize corrosion management across Aramco's operations. The work pairs Emerson's ultrasonic online corrosion-monitoring technology and wireless wall-thickness sensing with real-time, continuous data collection — explicitly aimed at eliminating manual, intermittent corrosion measurements in favor of a reliable digital data stream for decision-making. Aramco contributes its own IP and process expertise.
Why it matters: Same principle as drilling, different failure mode. The value isn't the sensor — it's moving from a periodic spot-check to a continuous signal, so degradation is caught while it's an inspection note instead of an incident. Integrity is just predictive monitoring pointed at steel instead of the wellbore.
Read on Oilfield Technology →
Market & Analysis • SNS Insider / GlobeNewswire · June 2
Measurement-While-Drilling market projected to double to $8.35B by 2035 — software leads the growth
A new SNS Insider report values the global MWD market at $4.01B in 2025, growing to $8.35B by 2035 (7.65% CAGR). The notable detail isn't the headline number — it's the mix: the Software & Services segment is projected to post the highest growth rate, driven by AI, predictive maintenance, cloud computing and remote monitoring. Wired drill pipe is the fastest-growing telemetry type on the strength of high-speed, high-volume data transmission; directional drilling remains the leading application.
Why it matters: The dollars are migrating from the hardware that takes the measurement to the software that decides what it means. That's the whole thesis of real-time intelligence — the sensor is table stakes; the value is in turning the stream into an action fast enough to matter.
Read the release →
Activity & Rig Count • Rigzone / Baker Hughes · June 2
North America adds 28 rigs — and the directional count jumps 10 week on week
Baker Hughes' latest North America rotary rig count (published May 29) put the total at 724 — 562 U.S. and 162 Canada, up 28 week on week. Inside the U.S. number, the detail that matters for the intelligence layer: the directional rig count rose 10 week on week while horizontal dropped six and vertical held flat. The Permian added five rigs; New Mexico led state-level gains with five.
Why it matters: Directional and horizontal rigs are the ones that depend on real-time placement to hit a target. A tick up in directional activity is more demand for exactly the geosteering and MWD intelligence the rest of this week's stories are building — more wells where being early with the signal is the difference.
Read on Rigzone →
The Rig Floor Take
Four stories, one through-line: the industry is paying for the interpretation layer, not the instrument. ROGII sharpened the picture the steering team acts on. Aramco and Emerson swapped a periodic corrosion clipboard for a continuous stream. The market read says the money is flowing to MWD software, not MWD steel. And the rig count quietly added the kind of wells — directional — that only pay off when the placement signal arrives in time.
That's the same lesson from every altitude. A measurement you collect is a cost; a measurement you can act on before the outcome changes is an edge. The gap between those two is shrinking, and that gap — not the sensor count — is where well economics are won. A trajectory corrected before it leaves the zone. A wall-thickness trend flagged before it's a leak. A connection standardized before it costs an hour.
WellCommand™ lives in that gap: predictive, real-time well intelligence that surfaces the change while it's still cheap to fix. Outcomes, not dashboards.