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Baker Hughes US rig count unchanged at 585
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Baker Hughes' U.S. rotary drilling rig count was 585 the week ending Oct. 25, unchanged from last week, and down by 40 from 625 a year ago, after dropping one rig two weeks ago. Over the last eight weeks the rig count was unchanged in one week, down in five and up in two weeks with gains of nine and losses of seven, compared to a downward trend dominant since the beginning of May. This is the lowest domestic rig count since December 2021.
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 Oct. 25 count includes 480 rigs targeting oil, down two from the previous week and down 24 from 504 a year ago, with 101 rigs targeting natural gas, up two from the previous week and down 16 from 117 a year ago, and four miscellaneous rigs, unchanged from the previous week and unchanged from a year ago.
Fifty-four of the rigs reported Oct. 25 were drilling directional wells, 513 were drilling horizontal wells and 18 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count unchanged New Mexico (100), Ohio (10) and Oklahoma (43) were each up by a single rig.
Louisiana (36) was down two rigs from the previous week and Pennsylvania (12) was down one rig.
Rig counts in other states were unchanged from the previous week: Alaska (10), California (6), Colorado (12), North Dakota (33), Texas (283), Utah (11), West Virginia (10) and Wyoming (17).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with 10 rotary rigs active Oct. 25, 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 unchanged from the previous week at 304 and down by nine from 313 a year ago.
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