US rotary rig count gains 5, now at 484
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Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Baker Hughes U.S. rotary drilling rig count was at 484 the week ending July 16, a gain of five from the previous week’s count of 479 and up by 231 from 253 a year ago.
When the count bottomed out at 244 in mid-August last year, it was not just the low for 2020, but the lowest the count has 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, where it remained through mid-March, 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 when it gained back 10 rigs.
The July 16 count includes 380 rigs targeting oil, up by two from the previous week and up 200 from 180 a year ago, 104 rigs targeting gas, up by three from the previous week and up by 33 from 71 a year ago, and no miscellaneous rigs, unchanged from the previous week and down by two from a year ago.
Thirty-two of the rigs reported July 16 were drilling directional wells, 434 were drilling horizontal wells and 18 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count up by one Wyoming (13) was up by three rigs from the previous week and Oklahoma (29) was up by two.
Alaska (5) and Louisiana (54) were each up by a single rig.
Texas, with the most active rigs in the country (222), was down by two from the previous week.
Rig counts in all other states were unchanged from the previous week: California (6), Colorado (12), New Mexico (75), North Dakota (18), Ohio (10), Pennsylvania (18), Utah (10) and West Virginia (10).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with five rigs active July 16, up by one from the previous week and up two from a year ago, when the state’s count stood at three.
The rig count in the Permian, the most active basin in the country, was up by one from the previous week at 238 and up by 114 from a count of 124 a year ago.
- KRISTEN NELSON
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