Rig 201 was constructed in 1981 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. It was dedicated in a ceremony by the U.S. Secretary of Energy. With a depth rating to 40,000 feet, Rig #201 is one of the largest onshore rigs in North America. The drilling floor of Rig #201 stands 40 feet off the ground, the height of a typical four-story building. The entire structure stands more than 200 feet from the ground to the tip of the mast.

Rig #201 is constructed of more than 1,500 tons of steel. It takes 106 semi-trailer trucks to move the 3,000,000 pound rig and related equipment from one location to another. In spite of its size, the rig can be taken apart, loaded on trucks, transported to a new location, and put back together in approximately 14 days. Typically the rig works in the same field for months or years at a time, moving from one well to another in the same field or area. The rig tends to stay on a single location, drilling a single well for a year or more. This is because the rig is only used to drill ultra-deep wells to depths greater than 22,000 feet and each well takes approximately a year to drill.

The rig was first put to work in Oklahoma drilling ultra-deep wells. The deepest well ever drilled using Rig 201, was a 29,241 foot gas well located in Beckham County, Oklahoma. This was in 1982. As gas prices declined, drilling was significantly curtailed and there was no market for this ultra-deep capacity rig. The rig was decommissioned and stacked from 1983 to 1988 when it was put back to work in Oklahoma drilling deep gas wells for Exxon Corporation. Around 1991, the rig was again decommissioned for a period of three years. In 1994 the rig was moved to Wyoming, to work in the Cave Gulch Field in the Wind River Basin. And in 1996 the rig was moved west in the Wind River Basin to the Madden Field in Fremont County, Wyoming. In 2000, the rig was used to drill the Bighorn #6-27, the deepest well ever drilled in Wyoming and in the Rocky Mountains at a total depth of 25,855 feet or almost five miles. It took 330 days to drill this well which was 1,000 feet deeper than the last deep Madison reservoir well drilled in the Madden Field.

Rig 201 has four 1,500 horsepower motors that consume 6,000 gallons of diesel fuel each day to operate the rig's generators, which in turn operate all of the rig equipment. That equipment includes the rig's derrick and substructure which is rated to 2,000,000 pounds. The derrick is fitted with a National PS750 top drive drilling system with 1,100 horsepower that is capable of lifting 750 tons. It has three 1,600 horsepower pumps that circulate the drilling mud as much as five miles down into the hole and back. The rig also has a 4,000 horsepower drawworks that lifts and lowers the drill pipe in and out of the hole and lowers up to 2,000,000 pounds of casing into the hole when a successful well is completed for production.