Baker Hughes US rig count drops 4 to 559
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Oklahoma, Texas, lead US weekly drop at 2 rigs each; international rig count down by 5 from April to May, down 67 year over year
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
Baker Hughes- U.S. rotary drilling rig count was 559 on June 6, down by four from the previous week, down by 35 from 594 a year ago and down by seven from two weeks ago. Over the last eight weeks the rig count was up in two weeks and down in six with a combined loss of 28 against a gain of four. This is the lowest the rig count has been since November 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 2024, the count peaked March 1 (and again March 15) at 629, hitting its low point June 28 at 581. In 2023 the count peaked early in the year at 775 on Jan. 13, bottoming out Nov. 10 at 616.
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 June 6 count includes 442 rigs targeting oil, down by nine from the previous week and down 50 from 492 a year ago, with 114 rigs targeting natural gas, up by five from the previous week and up 16 from 98 a year ago, and three miscellaneous rigs, unchanged from the previous week and down by one from a year ago.
Forty-one of the rigs reported June 6 were drilling directional wells, 505 were drilling horizontal wells and 13 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count unchanged Louisiana (31) was up by one rig from the previous week.
Oklahoma (50) and Texas (264) were each down by two rigs, while Utah (10) was down one rig.
Rig counts in other states were unchanged from the previous week: Alaska (10), California (6), Colorado (8), New Mexico (91), North Dakota (30), Ohio (11), Pennsylvania (18), West Virginia (7) and Wyoming (21).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with 10 rotary rigs active June 6, unchanged from the previous week and up by one from a year ago when the state- s count was nine.
The rig count in the Permian, the most active basin in the country, was down by three from the previous week at 275 and down by 35 from 310 a year ago.
International rig count down by 5 in May Baker Hughes- monthly international rig count for May, issued June 6, is down by five from April at 886 and down 67 from a count of 953 in May 2024, with land rigs down by six at 699, month over month, and offshore rigs up 1 at 187.
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 May, 327, followed by Asia Pacific with 206, Latin America with 136, Europe with 123 and Africa with 94.
The U.S. rig count averaged 573 in May, down by 13 from 586 in April, and down 29 from May 2024, while the Canadian count for May averaged 116, down 22 from 138 in April and down three from May 2024.
Worldwide the rig count averaged 1,576 in May, down 40 from 1,616 in April and down 99 from 1,675 in May 2024.
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