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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 Nov. 8, unchanged from the previous week, down by 31 from 616 a year ago and unchanged from the previous three weeks. Over the last eight weeks the rig count was unchanged in three weeks, down in four and up in one week with losses of six and a gain of one, continuing 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 Nov. 8 count includes 479 rigs targeting oil, unchanged from the previous week and down 15 from 494 a year ago, with 102 rigs targeting natural gas, unchanged from the previous week and down 16 from 118 a year ago, and four miscellaneous rigs, unchanged from the previous week and unchanged from a year ago.
Forty-nine of the rigs reported Nov. 8 were drilling directional wells, 520 were drilling horizontal wells and 16 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count unchanged Oklahoma (44) was up by two rigs from the previous week while Pennsylvania (14) and Wyoming (18) were each up by a single rig.
Louisiana (33) was down three rigs and Colorado (11) was down one rig.
Rig counts in other states were unchanged from the previous week: Alaska (10), California (6), New Mexico (100), North Dakota (34), Ohio (10), Texas (281), Utah (12) and West Virginia (10).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with 10 rotary rigs active Nov. 8, 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 303 and down by seven from 310 a year ago.
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