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Baker Hughes US rig count down 3 at 586
Texas down 2 rigs week over week; international count for July down 23 from June at 934; worldwide count 1,713 for July, up by 7
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Baker Hughes' U.S. rotary drilling rig count was 586 the week ending Aug. 1, down by three rigs from 589 the previous week, and down by 73 from 659 a year ago, after increasing by three the week ending July 26. Over the last eight weeks the rig count was down in five and up in three with a loss of 17 against a gain of nine over the period, continuing a downward trend dominant since the beginning of May. This is the lowest domestic rig count since January of 2022.
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 2023, the count hit its low point Nov. 10 at 616, down from a high of 775 on Jan. 13, 2023. In 2022, the count bottomed out at 588 Jan. 1, reaching a high for the year of 784 on Nov. 23.
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 Aug. 1 count includes 482 rigs targeting oil, unchanged from the previous week and down 43 from 525 a year ago, with 98 rigs targeting natural gas, down three from the previous week and down 30 from 128 a year ago, and six miscellaneous rigs, unchanged from the previous week and unchanged from a year ago.
Forty-nine of the rigs reported Aug. 1 were drilling directional wells, 520 were drilling horizontal wells and 17 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count unchanged California (8) and Wyoming (12) were each up by a single rig from the previous week.
Texas (274) was down by two rigs week over week.
Colorado (13), Louisiana (40) and Pennsylvania (20) were each down one rig.
Rig counts in other states were unchanged from the previous week: Alaska (10), New Mexico (108), North Dakota (35), Ohio (11), Oklahoma (35), Utah (13) and West Virginia (5).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with 10 rotary rigs active Aug. 1, unchanged from the previous week and up by one from a year ago when the count was nine.
The rig count in the Permian, the most active basin in the country, was down by one from the previous week at 303 and down by 26 from 329 a year ago.
International rig count down 23 for July Baker Hughes' monthly international rig count for July, issued Aug. 2, is down by 23 from June at 934, and down by 27 from a count of 961 in July 2023, with land rigs down by 24 to 720 and offshore rigs up by one to 214.
Baker Hughes began providing a monthly international rig count in 1975. The international count excludes North America, which is included in the company's worldwide figures.
The Middle East accounted for the most rigs in the international totals for July, 345, followed by Asia Pacific with 209, Latin America with 154, Europe with 118 and Africa with 108.
The U.S. rig count averaged 586 in July, down by two from June, and down 86 from July 2023, while the Canadian count for July averaged 193, up 32 from June and up by eight from July 2023.
Worldwide the rig count was 1,713 in July, up seven from 1,707 in June and down 106 from 1,819 in July 2023.
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