Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you. (Operator Instructions). Your first question comes from the line of Marshall Adkins with Raymond James.
Marshall Adkins
Good morning, Steve. Couple of questions. First on backlog, I’ve covered you long enough to know that you don’t have a backlog, but you do have what we call an order book. But keeping in the concept of backlog or keeping with that concept, tell me how the order activity is going out towards the end of ?08, number one? And number two, where is that activity shaping up? I know you got a lot of stuff going in the Barnett today. Help me understand the trends going into ?09 as to where people are shooting seismic in the areas where they are headed.
Steve Jumper
Okay. Marshall, to address the first part of your question, the overall order book, backlog, however we are going to say, we are going to refer to that as order book as you mentioned, has increased from the first quarter. Bid activity is very strong in multiple basins all across the lower 48. We’ve seen what I would consider a substantial increase in activity in the last few months. Although, I don’t know that we were ever particularly concerned about our order books level, we are certainly seeing some growth in that area, and that’s why we are putting out the additional crew. The small crew is going to be a lower channel count crew. As I have said, it’s going to be doing large 2D projects and some smaller 3D projects headed back to the Northeast.
We’re still very active in the Barnett shale area. I think that’s going to continue to be an active place for us. We’ve actually picked up quite a bit of activity in West Texas here lately, and Eastern New Mexico throughout the Permian Basin. We have about six or seven crews currently operating within 250 miles of Midland, which is something that’s changed in recent quarters. I think that is probably a temporary thing. We’ll probably keep three to four crews active out here off and on for the next year or so. Still very active in Eastern Oklahoma, still very active in the Fayetteville Shale of Arkansas. Of course, as everybody knows the Northeast is heating up, it’s very active, the Marcellus Shale is a very active basin for us.
We are hearing a lot of activity, bid activity certainly in the Rockies area and so, we have high hopes for that later on in the year. We have seen some increased activity, of course in Haynesville shale. I think that’s going to be an area that could heat up. Probably some of the most exciting things we are hearing, well, it’s all exciting. I mean there is a lot to be done in the lower 48 that marks very very strong. Two places that I think look promising are the oil shale plays and the Barnett going in the North Texas and certainly the Bakken play in North Dakota appear like it's going to be a hot item for quite some time. So, we’ve got quite a bit of spread. We have opportunities also the West, we’ve got some opportunities in California that we’re looking at and Northeast, the Appalachian Basin is strong and we’ll continue to play in the shale plays as well as some of these new oil finds.
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