To drill a well, your partnership needs to include a financier who has bought a drilling rig. Your partnership will negotiate a fee for the rig’s services, and pay the contractor that fee. The OilFinancier agreement has a clause to name the contractor and state the fee.

You can become a drilling contractor by telling the administrator you wish to purchase a drilling rig. You must have a positive cash balance to buy a rig, but you can go into the red after you purchase it.

A conventional rig costs $200,000 plus $1,000 for each OF Day that has transpired. It can only drill on conventional squares.

A hostile rig costs $400,000 plus $2,000 for each OF Day that has transpired. It can only drill on hostile squares.

After you buy your rig, it is up to you to keep your rig working for a good fee. You can buy more than one rig.

Assessing the Driller's Fee A fair fee for a conventional rig is about $5,000 per OF day. For a hostile rig, use about $12,000 per OF day. Of course, the overall supply and demand of drilling rigs can affect these prices. So too can local shortages and surpluses. It's up to you to figure all this out. If you get it right most of the time, your share price goes up!

A rig sitting idle does not cost anything—except for the opportunity lost by the drilling contractor for not putting his asset to work. An idle rig stays at the location of its last well. A drilling contractor can move it at his own expense—if he is in the black.

A drilling rig can be traded to another financier. Use the trade property agreement to set this up.

When your rig gets its first drilling contract, you need not wait until the well is finished to start dealing on another contract. In fact, you should stack up your deals such that when one well is finished, your rig automatically moves to the next well.

Rig Supply and Demand When you get some deals stacked up, this proves your rig is in demand. You should be able to charge a premium―and you can afford to wait a bit to see if you can get that premium.

Your rig will only last for 100 OF Days. So at this time, it will finish its current contracts and then be retired. You can not add new contracts after this date.

Your Rig's Last Days Try to stack up as many deals as possible in your rig's last days. You can get contractor fees for another 10 to 20 OF days if you hustle up a stack of deals.

When you become a drilling contractor, you still have your role as an oil financier. You can still buy oil rights and make deals on wells. You can use your rig or another drilling contractor's to drill your well.

Moving your rig costs money, but the investors will pay for it.

The manufacturer that makes drilling rigs is located on square A10. Therefore when you buy a conventional rig, it starts at A10. If you buy a hostile rig, it starts at A11.

If you have your own rig, your own oil right, and a positive bank balance, you can drill a well on that oil right without having to find a partner.

The seminar keeps track of all rigs with the Rig Map.

Asking for Bids It's quite common in the petroleum industry for oil companies to ask several drilling contractors for a bid―and often take the lowest bid. This practice will likely happen in OilFinancier. When bids come in, don't automatically take the lowest bid. You need to consider rig moving costs and when the well is going to be drilled. And of course, you should still have a positive ENPV based on the bid you choose. Otherwise, use your money to look at other opportunities.