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Baker Hughes US rig count down 2 to 588
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Baker Hughes' U.S. rotary drilling rig count was 588 the week ending Sept. 20, down by two rigs from 590 the previous week, and down by 42 from 630 a year ago, after gaining eight the previous week. Over the last eight weeks the rig count was down in six and up in two with a loss of 11 against a gain of 10 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 Sept. 20 count includes 488 rigs targeting oil, unchanged from the previous week and down 19 from 507 a year ago, with 96 rigs targeting natural gas, down one from the previous week and down 22 from 118 a year ago, and four miscellaneous rigs, down one from the previous week and also down one from a year ago.
Fifty of the rigs reported Sept. 20 were drilling directional wells, 523 were drilling horizontal wells and 15 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count unchanged Texas (276) was up two rigs from the previous week.
Colorado (11), Louisiana (42), New Mexico (106) and Utah (11) were each down by a single rig week over week.
Rig counts in other states were unchanged from the previous week: Alaska (10), California (6), North Dakota (33), Ohio (9), Oklahoma (41), Pennsylvania (14), West Virginia (10) and Wyoming (17).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with 10 rotary rigs active Sept. 20, 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 up by one from the previous week at 307 and down by 10 from 317 a year ago.
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