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Baker Hughes US rig unchanged at 589
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Baker Hughes' U.S. rotary drilling rig count was 589 on Dec. 27, unchanged from the previous week, down by 33 from 622 a year ago and unchanged from two weeks ago. Over the last eight weeks the rig count was unchanged in four weeks, down in three and up in one week with a gain of seven and losses of three, a change from the downward trend dominant since the beginning of May. This is the lowest domestic rig count since January 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 2024, the count peaked March 1 (and again March 15) at 629, hitting its low point June 28 at 581. In 2023 the count peaked early in the year at 775 on Jan. 13, bottoming out Nov. 10 at 616.
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 Dec. 27 count includes 483 rigs targeting oil, unchanged from the previous week and down 17 from 500 a year ago, with 102 rigs targeting natural gas, unchanged from the previous week and down 18 from 120 a year ago, and four miscellaneous rigs, unchanged from the previous week and up by two from a year ago.
Forty-nine of the rigs reported Dec. 27 were drilling directional wells, 527 were drilling horizontal wells and 13 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count unchanged North Dakota (36) was up by one rig from the previous week while Texas (284) was down by one.
Rig counts in other states were unchanged from the previous week: Alaska (10), California (6), Colorado (10), Louisiana (31), New Mexico (103), Ohio (9), Oklahoma (43), Pennsylvania (15), Utah (12), West Virginia (10) and Wyoming (18).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with 10 rotary rigs active Dec. 27, unchanged from the previous week and unchanged from a year ago.
The rig count in the Permian, the most active basin in the country, was unchanged from the previous week at 304 and down by five from 309 a year ago.
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