Profile: Union Drilling, Inc. (UDRL.O)

Union Drilling, Inc. (Union Drilling), incorporated in September 1997, provides contract land drilling services and equipment, primarily to natural gas producers in the United States. In addition to its drilling rigs, The Company provides the drilling crews and the ancillary equipment needed to operate the Company's drilling rigs. During the year ended December 31, 2008, the Company’s three largest customers accounted for approximately 18%, 12% and 5%, respectively, of its total revenues. As of December 31, 2008, The Company operated a fleet of 71 marketed land drilling rigs.

Substantially all of the Company’s rigs operated in unconventional natural gas producing areas, which are characterized by formations with very low permeability rock, such as shales, tight sands and coal bed methane (CBM), that require specialized drilling techniques to develop the natural gas resources. The Company has equipped 50 of its 71 rigs for drilling horizontal wells. The Company has equipped 46 of its 71 rigs with compressed air circulation systems, also known as underbalanced drilling, which provides higher penetration rates through hard rock formations.

The Company provides drilling services to customers engaged in developing unconventional natural gas formations throughout the United States. It operates in the Appalachian and Arkoma Basins, as well as the Barnett Shale formation. To recover natural gas from this formation, fracturing techniques are used, which allows the natural gas to flow to the surface. The Marcellus Shale, also referred to as the Marcellus Formation, is a Middle Devonian-age black, low density, carbonaceous (organic rich) shale that occurs in the subsurface beneath much of Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York. Small areas of Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia are also underlain by the Marcellus Shale.

Natural gas also is found in shallow coal seams throughout the Appalachian Basin. This natural gas is commonly referred to as CBM. In addition to exploration and development activity on behalf of more traditional natural gas producers, coal companies have engaged in the development of CBM formations in order to reduce the concentration of these deposits in advance of mining operations, reducing the risk of underground fires or explosions. The Company supports these activities with rigs that drill horizontally into the coal seams, providing faster drainage than vertical drilling. The Company also has rigs that work for coal companies in advance of coal mining operations to extract metal casing and other materials from existing wells to reduce the possibility of underground fires or explosions during mining.

The Arkoma Basin includes Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma covering an area of about 33,800 square miles. The natural gas directed drilling in the Arkoma Basin is conducted by rigs equipped with air compression equipment for underbalanced drilling operations. The primary natural gas bearing formation being developed by its customers in the Arkoma Basin was the Hartshorne coal seam, which is found at depths of 300 to 4,000 feet throughout much of the Arkoma Basin. The Barnett Shale formation, found near Fort Worth, Texas, at average depths of 6,500 to 8,500 feet. The use of horizontal drilling to develop the formation, combined with the application of multi-stage fracturing techniques, has opened this formation to extensive drilling.

The Company competes with Nabors Industries Inc.