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Baker Hughes US rig count down 2 to 585
Alaska rig count holds steady; Texas gains 2; international count for September up by 16 from August at 947, up 7 year-over-year Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Baker Hughes' U.S. rotary drilling rig count was 585 the week ending Oct. 4, down by two from 587 the previous week, and down by 34 from 619 a year ago, after dropping one rig the previous week. Over the last eight weeks the rig count was down in seven weeks and up in one with a loss of 11 against a gain of eight, continuing a downward trend dominant since the beginning of May. This is the lowest domestic rig count since December 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 Oct. 4 count includes 479 rigs targeting oil, down five from the previous week and down 18 from 497 a year ago, with 102 rigs targeting natural gas, up by three from the previous week and down 16 from 118 a year ago, and four miscellaneous rigs, unchanged from the previous week and unchanged from a year ago.
Forty-nine of the rigs reported Oct. 4 were drilling directional wells, 522 were drilling horizontal wells and 14 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count unchanged Texas (279) was up two rigs from the previous week while Pennsylvania (15) was up by one rig.
New Mexico (101) was down three rigs week over week, while Louisiana (40) and Oklahoma (40) were each down by a single rig.
Rig counts in other states were unchanged from the previous week: Alaska (10), California (6), Colorado (11), North Dakota (33), Ohio (9), Utah (11), West Virginia (10) and Wyoming (17).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with 10 rotary rigs active Oct. 4, 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 down by two from the previous week at 304 and down by five from 309 a year ago.
International rig count up 16 in September International rig count up 16 in September
Baker Hughes' monthly international rig count for September, issued Oct. 4, is up by 16 from August at 947, and up by seven from a count of 940 in September 2023, with land rigs up 15 to 735 and offshore rigs up by one to 212.
Baker Hughes began providing a monthly international rig count in 1975. The international count excludes North America, which is included in the company's worldwide figures.
The Middle East accounted for the most rigs in the international totals for September, 337, followed by Asia Pacific with 226, Latin America with 157, Europe with 121 and Africa with 94.
The U.S. rig count averaged 587 in September, up by one from August, and down 45 from September 2023, while the Canadian count for September averaged 217, down two from August and up by 29 from September 2023.
Worldwide the rig count averaged 1,751 in September, up 15 from 1,735 in August and down eight from 1,759 in September 2023.
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