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Baker Hughes US rig count unchanged at 600
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Baker Hughes' U.S. rotary drilling rig count was 600 the week ending May 31, unchanged from 600 the previous week, and down by 96 from 696 a year ago, following a drop of four rigs last week. Over the last eight weeks the rig count was unchanged one week, down in five and up in two, with a loss of 23 against a gain of three 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 May 31 count includes 496 rigs targeting oil, down one from the previous week and down 59 from 555 a year ago, with 100 rigs targeting natural gas, up by one rig from the previous week and down 37 from 137 a year ago, and four miscellaneous rigs, unchanged from the previous week and also unchanged from a year ago.
Forty-four of the rigs reported May 31 were drilling directional wells, 536 were drilling horizontal wells and 20 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count unchanged Louisiana (42) and Pennsylvania (22) were each up by a single rig from the previous week.
New Mexico (107) and Oklahoma (42) were each down one rig.
Rig counts in other states were unchanged from the previous week: Alaska (9), California (3), Colorado (14), North Dakota (32), Ohio (10), Texas (287), Utah (12), West Virginia (6) and Wyoming (11).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with nine rotary rigs active May 31, unchanged from the previous week and up by two from a year ago when the count was seven rigs.
The rig count in the Permian, the most active basin in the country, was down two from the previous week at 310 and down by 38 from 348 a year ago.
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