The most financially consequential breakthrough technology on Earth, shale fracking, saved Americans $237 billion the last two years. The dramatically reduced energy costs are a dividend from the ongoing shale oil revolution.

Petroleum engineers are constantly finding better ways to extract crude from rocks. They’ve learned to drill horizontal well bores up to three miles long thousands of feet below the surface, and to fracture the surrounding shale with precision explosives as well as massive volumes of water, sand and chemicals.

At the peak of triple-digit oil prices during the summer of 2014, every new rig deployed in the Permian Basin of Texas was delivering an incremental output gain of 200 barrels per day (bpd). Less than three years later that number is up to 660 bpd.

As great as that’s worked out for motorists, the productivity gains have been less kind to the oil industry. The price of crude has been cut by more than half as a result of the global glut the shale boom caused. The U.S. oil rig count slumped from more than 1,600 in late 2014 to a low of 316 last May. It has since rebounded to 617.

This recent uplift is great news for Helmerich & Payne (NYSE:  HP). It is the leading contractor of land-based drilling rigs, especially the new advanced rigs most in demand right now. H&P controls 18% of the U.S. land rig market and 27% of the new rigs essential for today’s demanding well designs.

Unlike the older direct-current models, the newer alternating current (AC) rigs permit greater drilling precision and finesse by feeding variable power levels to different functions. 

The rigs also get the job done as much as 30% faster. 

Drilling a horizontal shale well only takes about a month or so now, and a contracted rig represents well under 10% of the total well cost. But it’s a job that has to be completed before the more expensive resources can be deployed, and one that has to be done right to maximize the well’s ultimate output.

So it makes little sense for customers to skimp and slow themselves down with older, less advanced rigs, especially amid the current rush to step up oil production once again.

Which is why in the most recent fiscal year H&P earned some 30% more per deployed rig than the average for its four nearest competitors. H&P is by far the financially fittest land rig supplier, with more cash than debt and the largest available inventory of advanced equipment.

During the industry’s two worst years in a generation, Helmerich and Payne managed not to run up net debt and never reduced a dividend financed with cash from operations. After pulling back 14% since Jan. 25, the stock yields 4%. It returned 50% last year but remains down 40% from its 2014 high.

Oilfield services providers tend to suffer disproportionally during production downturns and benefit accordingly in a recovery like the one now underway. And Helmerich & Payne is one of the best oilfield services companies around, with heavy exposure to the hot drilling basins in Texas and Oklahoma and a technological as well as a financial edge.

We’ll be writing more in the future about the ways cutting-edge companies are transforming the energy industry, but for now we’re adding H&P to the portfolio with a buy limit of $80.