Baker Hughes US rig count down 7 at 583
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Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Baker Hughes' U.S. rotary drilling rig count was 583 on April 11, down by seven from the previous week, the steepest week-over-week drop since late June of last year, down by 34 from 617 a year ago and down by 11 from two weeks ago. Over the last eight weeks the rig count was down in four weeks, up in three and unchanged in one with a combined loss of 11 against a gain of six.
A drop of 17 to 731 on May 12, 2023, was the steepest weekly drop since June of 2020, during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the count also dropped by 17 to 284 on June 5, following drops as steep as 73 rigs in one week in April. The count continued down to 251 at the end of July 2020, reaching an all-time low of 244 in mid-August 2020.
For 2024, the count peaked March 1 (and again March 15) at 629, hitting its low point June 28 at 581. In 2023 the count peaked early in the year at 775 on Jan. 13, bottoming out Nov. 10 at 616.
When the count dropped to 244 in mid-August 2020, it was the lowest the domestic rotary rig count had been since the Houston based oilfield services company began issuing weekly U.S. numbers in 1944.
Prior to 2020, the low was 404 rigs in May 2016. The count peaked at 4,530 in 1981.
The count was in the low 790s at the beginning of 2020 prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, where it remained through mid-March of that year when it began to fall, dropping below what had been the historic low in early May with a count of 374 and continuing to drop through the third week of August 2020 when it gained back 10 rigs.
The April 11 count includes 480 rigs targeting oil, down by nine from the previous week and down 26 from 506 a year ago, with 97 rigs targeting natural gas, up by one from the previous week and down 12 from 109 a year ago, and six miscellaneous rigs, up by one from the previous week and up by four from a year ago.
Forty-six of the rigs reported April 11 were drilling directional wells, 523 were drilling horizontal wells and 14 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count unchanged Pennsylvania (16) was up by one rig.
Texas (274) was down three rigs week-over-week; California (6) and West Virginia (9) were each down by two rigs; and New Mexico (100) was down by a single rig.
Rig counts in other states were unchanged from the previous week: Alaska (10), Colorado (8), Louisiana (30), North Dakota (32), Ohio (10), Oklahoma (53), Utah (12) and Wyoming (21).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with 10 rotary rigs active April 11, unchanged from the previous week and down by four from a year ago when the state's count was 14.
The rig count in the Permian, the most active basin in the country, was down by five from the previous week at 289 and down by 27 from 316 a year ago.
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