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US rotary rig count back up by 6 to 503
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Baker Hughes U.S. rotary drilling rig count was at 503 the week ending Sept. 10, up six rigs after an 11-rig drop the preceding week when Gulf of Mexico drilling closed down because of Hurricane Ida. The count was up by 249 from 254 a year ago.
When the count dropped to 244 in mid-August 2020 it was the lowest the domestic rotary rig count has 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, where it remained through mid-March, 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.
U.S. offshore rigs, a count which includes the Gulf of Mexico, stood at six Sept. 10, up by four from two the previous week and down by nine from 15 rigs a year ago.
The Sept. 10 count includes 401 rigs targeting oil, up seven from the previous week and up 221 from 180 a year ago, with 101 rigs targeting gas, down one from the previous week and up 30 from 71 a year ago, and one miscellaneous rig, unchanged from the previous week and down by two from a year ago.
Sixteen of the rigs reported Sept. 10 were drilling directional wells, 461 were drilling horizontal wells and 26 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count unchanged The most significant week-over-week change in state counts was Louisiana (39), up by four rigs from the previous week.
Texas (235) was up by three rigs and Utah (12) was up by one rig.
Pennsylvania (17) was down two rigs.
Counts in all other states were unchanged, week-over-week: Alaska (5), California (6), Colorado (11), New Mexico (82), North Dakota (22), Ohio (12), Oklahoma (32), West Virginia (9) and Wyoming (18).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with five rigs active Sept. 10, unchanged from the previous week and up two from a year ago, when the state’s count stood at three.
The rig count in the Permian, the most active basin in the country, was up by four from the previous week at 254 and up by 130 from a count of 124 a year ago.
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