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Baker Hughes US rig count up by 4 to 622
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Baker Hughes'U.S. rotary drilling rig count was 622 for the short Thanksgiving week ending Nov. 22, up by four rigs from the previous week, and down by 162 from 782 a year ago. The rig count has been up in five and down in three of the last eight weeks, with a total gain of nine against losses of 13, continuing a downward trend dominant since the beginning of May.
A drop of 17 on May 12 was the steepest drop since June of 2020, during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Nov. 22 count is the lowest since Feb. 4, 2022, when the count was 613. The count dropped below 700 the week ending June 2, the first time it has been that low since April 2022. This week's count is down from a high so far this year of 775 on Jan. 13. The high for 2022 was a count of 784 rigs at the beginning of December.
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 Nov. 22 count includes 500 rigs targeting oil, unchanged from the previous week and down by 127 from 627 a year ago, with 117 rigs targeting natural gas, up by three from the previous week and down 38 from 155 a year ago, and five miscellaneous rigs, up by one from the previous week and up by three from a year ago.
Fifty-five of the rigs reported Nov. 22 were drilling directional wells, 554 were drilling horizontal wells and 13 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count up by 1 Louisiana (41) was up two rigs from the previous week.
Alaska (10), Oklahoma (38), Pennsylvania (20) and Texas (303) were each up by a single rig.
Colorado (17), New Mexico (106) were each down by one rig week over week.
Rig counts in other states were unchanged from the previous week: California (5), North Dakota (31), Ohio (12), Utah (12), West Virginia (8) and Wyoming (16).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with 10 rotary rigs active Nov. 10, up by one from the previous week and unchanged from a year ago when the count was also 10. Nine of the Alaska rigs were onshore, up by one from the previous week, with one rig working offshore, unchanged from the previous week.
The rig count in the Permian, the most active basin in the country, was unchanged from the previous week at 311 and down by 41 from 352 a year ago.
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