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Baker Hughes US rig count up by1 to 604
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Baker Hughes' U.S. rotary drilling rig count was 604 the week ending May 17, up by one rig from 603 the previous week, and down by 116 from 720 a year ago, partially reversing a drop of two rigs last week. The rig count was down in six and up in two of the last eight weeks, 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 17 count includes 497 rigs targeting oil, up by one from the previous week and down 78 from 575 a year ago, with 103 rigs targeting natural gas, unchanged from the previous week and down 38 from 141 a year ago, and four miscellaneous rigs, unchanged from the previous week and unchanged from a year ago.
Forty-one of the rigs reported May 17 were drilling directional wells, 545 were drilling horizontal wells and 18 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count unchanged Louisiana (40), Oklahoma (44) and Texas (290) are each up a single rig from the previous week.
New Mexico (107) was down by two rigs week over week.
Rig counts in other states were unchanged from the previous week: Alaska (9), California (3), Colorado (14), North Dakota (32), Ohio (11), Pennsylvania (21), Utah (12), West Virginia (8) and Wyoming (11).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with nine rotary rigs active May 17, unchanged from the previous week and up by one from a year ago when the count was eight rigs.
The rig count in the Permian, the most active basin in the country, was down by two from the previous week at 312 and down by 37 from 349 a year ago.
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