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A deal at next month’s OPEC meeting could provide further stability in oil markets. Some Canadian petroleum producers have already telegraphed they will increase their capital budgets for 2017.

Neveu noted Precision has reactivated 37 rigs in Canada and 16 in the United States “in the early stages of this rebound.”

About 70 per cent of the 1,000 recent hires were previous employees, while the remainder were new staff.

Precision isn’t alone in seeing some daylight ahead.

Predator Drilling Inc., for example, is looking for about 150 new workers in the next couple of months as it increases its ranks for the winter drilling season.

The Red Deer company, with 27 rigs and about 130 employees, is seeing work pick up in the oilsands, parts of Saskatchewan and the Montney area. It just mobilized its first rig in the Permian Basin in Texas.

“We’ve got more opportunities in front of us this winter. And so just to stay ahead of that game and cycle, if you will, we’ve been looking for people,” CEO Shane Walper said Monday.

“I definitely believe the level of optimism is higher than it has been.”

Much of this sounds hopeful.

But at the risk of being a wet rag, there’s plenty of sobering news to consider.

The service sector that has been bulldozed by big losses, brutal downsizing, tough competition and fierce pricing pressure.

Only 21 per cent of the country’s 671 rigs are working this week. While that’s up from eight per cent in early July, it’s a far cry from the 47 per cent of rigs that were active in the third quarter of 2014.