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Baker Hughes US rig count down 6 to 613
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Baker Hughes' U.S. rotary drilling rig count was 613 the week ending April 26, down by six rigs from 619 the previous week, and down by 142 from 755 a year ago, following a gain 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 25 against a gain of nine over the period, following a downward trend dominant since the beginning of May.
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 April 26 count includes 506 rigs targeting oil, down by five from the previous week and down 85 from 591 a year ago, with 105 rigs targeting natural gas, down one from the previous week and down 56 from 161 a year ago, and two miscellaneous rigs, unchanged from the previous week and down one from a year ago.
Forty-seven of the rigs reported April 26 were drilling directional wells, 552 were drilling horizontal wells and 14 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count unchanged Texas (297) was up by one rig from the previous week.
Louisiana (36) was down four rigs week over week.
Colorado (14), New Mexico (107) and Pennsylvania (21) were each down by a single rig.
Rig counts in other states were unchanged from the previous week: Alaska (14), California (3), North Dakota (32), Ohio (11), Oklahoma (45), Utah (12), West Virginia (8) and Wyoming (11).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with 14 rotary rigs active April 26, unchanged from the previous week and up by five from a year ago when the count was nine.
The rig count in the Permian, the most active basin in the country, was down by one from the previous week at 317 and down by 44 from 361 a year ago.
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