Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions). We will now take our first question from James West with Barclays Capital.
James West - Barclays Capital
Good morning, guys.
Vince Volpe
Good morning, James.
James West - Barclays Capital
Vince, clearly, the order rate for the third quarter was strong. It sounds like talking with your customers that their '09 budgets are for the most part intact. But, I guess, my question would be in the last call, one to two months orders, I guess, has there been any kind of delays in orders? Are people pushing back programs a little bit to see how the economic situation shakes up, or are people generally going forward, I guess projects that would have gone forward in October did they go awarded?
Vince Volpe
Yeah, projects that were going to be awarded in October other than what should normally get changed in a period of high supply is you don't have enough people to get things done exactly when you want. So there is a normal process of orders just kind of slipping a month or two. And so that's about what we saw in the quarter now.
To be a little more direct in answering your question, we've talked to a lot of our customers. We have all of these alliance clients and one of the good things about that is, they will talk to you at a different level and kind of tell you what they're thinking.
So, what we got from the preponderance of the majors and some of the national oil company clients were basically they are going to proceed now. There are some areas where the economics were somewhat marginal. And by the way, I don't believe its economic crisis-driven okay? I think its commodity price-driven in their case.
They've all got pretty strong balance sheets, so they've got plenty of cash, okay? But I think that based on some of the commodity price shifts, we have got most of the majors saying they are still going to proceed.
Now, there is an oil refinery here or a tar sands project there that are going to be pushed back, but whole scale slowdown or stoppage, we just don't see at this juncture in time. And that's why we continue to predict. We know we are going to have a good strong revenue year because the new unit stuff is already in the backlog.
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