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Baker Hughes US rig count up by 2 to 586
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Baker Hughes' U.S. rotary drilling rig count was 586 the week ending July 19, up by two rigs from 584 the previous week, and down by 83 from 660 a year ago, after dropping by one the week ending July 12. Over the last eight weeks the rig count was unchanged one week, down in five and up in two with a loss of 20 against a gain of six over the period, continuing a downward trend dominant since the beginning of May. This is the lowest domestic rig count since December of 2021.
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 July 19 count includes 477 rigs targeting oil, down one from the previous week and down 53 from 530 a year ago, with 103 rigs targeting natural gas, up three from the previous week and down 28 from 131 a year ago, and six miscellaneous rigs, unchanged from the previous week and down by two one from a year ago.
Forty-eight of the rigs reported July 19 were drilling directional wells, 520 were drilling horizontal wells and 18 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count unchanged California (7) was up by two rigs from the previous week.
New Mexico (108), Ohio (11) and Utah (13) were each up by a single rig.
Louisiana (42) was down by two rigs from the previous week, while Oklahoma (33) was down by one.
Rig counts in other states were unchanged from the previous week: Alaska (9), Colorado (14), North Dakota (34), Pennsylvania (21), Texas (276), West Virginia (5) and Wyoming (11).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with nine rotary rigs active July 19, unchanged from the previous week and up by one from a year ago when the count was eight.
The rig count in the Permian, the most active basin in the country, was unchanged from the previous week at 305 and down by 28 from 333 a year ago.
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