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Baker Hughes US rig count up by 2 to 588
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Baker Hughes' U.S. rotary drilling rig count was 588 the week ending Aug. 9, up by two rigs from 586 the previous week, and down by 66 from 654 a year ago, after dropping by three the week ending Aug. 2. Over the last eight weeks the rig count was up in four weeks and down in four with a loss of 13 against a gain of 11 over the period, continuing a downward trend dominant since the beginning of May. This is the lowest domestic rig count 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 Aug. 9 count includes 485 rigs targeting oil, up by three from the previous week and down 40 from 525 a year ago, with 97 rigs targeting natural gas, down one from the previous week and down 26 from 123 a year ago, and six miscellaneous rigs, unchanged from the previous week and unchanged from a year ago.
Fifty of the rigs reported Aug. 9 were drilling directional wells, 521 were drilling horizontal wells and 17 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count unchanged Texas (276) and Wyoming (14) were each up by two rigs from the previous week.
Colorado (14) and Pennsylvania (21) were each up by a single rig.
Louisiana (38) was down by two rigs while New Mexico (107) and Ohio (10) were each down by a single rig.
Rig counts in other states were unchanged from the previous week: Alaska (10), California (8), North Dakota (35), Oklahoma (35), Utah (13) and West Virginia (5).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with 10 rotary rigs active Aug. 9, 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 up by one from the previous week at 304 and down by 23 from 327 a year ago.
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