Satellite companies also track shale drilling rigs. There are a few 'stages' in the lifecycle of drilling rig, with a focus on "DUP" rigs -- drilled but uncomp

Satellite companies also track shale drilling rigs. There are a few 'stages' in the lifecycle of drilling rig, with a focus on "DUP" rigs -- drilled but uncompleted -- which can be brought online on short notice(). The various stages of development require crews of different experience or expertise. I was told that some/a company is able figure out the phone numbers of crews accustomed to (I think) bringing DUP wells fully online. Then they are able to monitor as they move around the permian or bakken and assess how many wells are brought online. I'm not sure that they know phone number (333)2920-2920 is Frank Jones the Expert, but they do know that the arrival of (333)2920-2920 and a cluster of other numbers is associated with a DUP well turning on production shortly after. ()I'm not very familiar with the shale fracking process, so don't jump on me for technical inaccuracy. Also there are many tongue-in-cheek or naive comments about refineries feigning problems, or knowledge of refinery issues being licenses to print money in futures. It's not even close. Many of the important refineries in the US are monitored 24/7 by third party companies (eg. Genscape) who stare at refineries with thermal cameras. These immediately notice potential problems, as flaring occurs, or some unit dramatically changes temp (gets hotter or cooler), updating subscribers in moments. There are similar services that scrape all the public-warning systems that refineries must use to inform residents when they have emissions or problems. Finally, while no doubt there are times when refinery upsets (particularly for major gasoline-producing refineries) occur there is an immediate, clear, exploitable move in futures markets [in fact recently], there are also many times when that knowledge would have been swamped by some other force. *I recall reading a few months ago that someone analysed a literal insider traders' trade history and realized they weren't able to exploit to nearly the level you'd expect. It just turns out that markets are absurdly complicated.