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The article discusses issues concerning the filing of avoidance actions against foreign defendants in bankruptcy cases in the U.S. Topics covered include personal jurisdiction in U.S. courts, recognition and enforcement of judgments and the advantages and disadvantages of a U.S. bankruptcy estate to file a Bankruptcy Code-based avoidance action in the U.S.

This article reports that the domestic oil and gas industry of the U.S. has been awash in anecdotal tales of efficiency improvements in the land drilling market for the last four years. Other accounts describe 25% to 40% improvements in drill days for 2004, vs. wells drilled to similar targets in 1999 or 2000. While such stories are impressive, there has been little comprehensive evidence to determine whether the gains represented "best in class" performance, occasional fortunate events, or were representative of all drilling activity. Some evidence of efficiency improvements was available through annual surveys of the most active individual U.S. land rigs. The samples noted above represented only the top 5% of U.S. land rigs and involved equipment that was operating in developmental programs that resembled a harvesting mode, which was ideally suited for realizing manufacturing style efficiency gains. The rapid adoption of drilling practices such as increased hydraulic horsepower, better bit design, and more powerful rigs also played a major part in improving rig performance, as measured by the fact that it took fewer drill days to reach similar depth ranges in several regional markets between 2001 and 2002.

The article focuses on the entailment of the increasing demand for drilling services in the U.S. It cites on the retooling cycle in the petroleum industry as a higher demand for drilling services would consume available land rigs that shows a similar trend in the second-quarter of 2008, thus, the onshore market will deplete the supply of available units in most rig classes by the time fall season arrives reaching 1,500-hp units exceeding its capacity.