|
Baker Hughes US rig count down 2 at 588
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Baker Hughes' U.S. rotary drilling rig count was 588 the week ending June 21, down two from 590 the previous week, and down by 94 from 682 a year ago, after dropping by four the week ending June 14. Over the last eight weeks the rig count was unchanged one week, down in six and up in one with a loss of 26 against a gain of one over the period, following a downward trend dominant since the beginning of May. This is the lowest the domestic count has been 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 June 21 count includes 485 rigs targeting oil, down three from the previous week and down 61 from 546 a year ago, with 98 rigs targeting natural gas, unchanged from the previous week and down 32 from 130 a year ago, and five miscellaneous rigs, up one from the previous week and down one from a year ago when the count was six.
Forty-four of the rigs reported June 21 were drilling directional wells, 525 were drilling horizontal wells and 19 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count unchanged North Dakota (34) was up by two rigs from the previous week.
California (5) and Louisiana (40) were each up by a single rig.
Texas (282) was down three rigs week over week, while Oklahoma (35) was down by two.
Rig counts in other states were unchanged from the previous week: Alaska (9), Colorado (14), New Mexico (108), Ohio (10), Pennsylvania (21), Utah (12), West Virginia (5) and Wyoming (11).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with nine rotary rigs active June 21, unchanged from the previous week and up by one from a year ago when the count was eight.
The rig count in the Permian, the most active basin in the country, was down by one from the previous week at 308 and down by 33 from 341 a year ago.
| 