In final month of what has been a dismal year for oil and gas, commodity prices continue to plummet through the first half of December. The Ohio rig count saw one of the most dramatic decreases the state saw throughout all of 2015. In just the 5 weeks from November 13th to December 18th, Ohio tallied a loss of 5 rigs, dropping from 20 to 15 rigs statewide. An even more alarming fact is that in a mere 12 months, Ohio has seen its rig count cut down to 1/3rd of what it was in December 2014. Ohio has seen a loss of 25 rigs from a year ago. Dropping from 45 rigs to 15 rigs in the entire state. While Ohio is one of the most, if not the most popular natural gas shale plays for operators in all of the North America, the fact is the price of natural gas continues to fall to the lowest we have seen in 20 years. As of today, December 18th, 2015, natural gas is currently trading at 1.78 USD/MMBtu which is a drop off of 46.19% from a year ago when it was trading at 3.67 USD/MMBtu. The eastern Ohio counties of Belmont, Monroe, Guernsey and Noble have been the stronghold for most all of the operators. Belmont County and Monroe County have boasted the highest number of rigs in Ohio throughout much of 2015. Having been the counties that were the slowest to drop in their respective rig counts from month to month. That trend continued into the first half of December, with each of the counties each losing 1 rigs. This brought Belmont and Monroe County down to 7 and 4 rigs, respectively. More notably, Guernsey and Noble County each lost their last rig. That means as of today, neither Guernsey or Noble Counties have a running rig. This is a major change from a year ago when both these counties combined for roughly 22% of all of the rigs in Ohio. With pretty much every operator predicting commodity prices to remain down through the better part of 2016, the number of rigs in Ohio will continue to remain extremely low and continue to fall with operators such as Gulfport suspending all Ohio production through at least the first quarter and likely much deeper into 2016, the number of rigs in Ohio will continue to follow oil and gas prices and will likely fall below 10 rigs statewide in the early months of 2016.