Baker Hughes US rig drops 5 to 624
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Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Baker Hughes' U.S. rotary drilling rig count was 624 for the week ending March 22, down by five rigs from 629 the previous week, and down by 134 from 758 a year ago, following a drop of seven rigs last week. The rig count increased in four and decreased in four of the last eight weeks, with a gain of 19 against a loss of 16 over the period, bucking 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 March 22 count includes 509 rigs targeting oil, down by one from the previous week and down 84 from 593 a year ago, with 112 rigs targeting natural gas, down by five from the previous week and down 50 from 162 a year ago, and three miscellaneous rigs, unchanged from the previous week and unchanged from a year ago.
Fifty-six of the rigs reported March 22 were drilling directional wells, 556 were drilling horizontal wells and 12 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count up by 1 Alaska (14) was up by one rig from the previous week.
Louisiana (44) was down by four rigs week over week.
New Mexico (106) and Pennsylvania (21) were each down by a single rig.
Rig counts in other states were unchanged from the previous week: California (6), Colorado (16), Kansas (1), North Dakota (32), Ohio (12), Oklahoma (44), Texas (294), Utah (12), West Virginia (9) and Wyoming (11).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with 14 rotary rigs active March 22, up by one from the previous week and up by four from a year ago when the count was 10. Thirteen 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 down by one from the previous week at 315 and down by 348 from 353 a year ago.
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