US rotary rig count up by 1 to 764
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Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Baker Hughes’ U.S. rotary drilling rig count was 764 on Sept. 23, up by one from the previous week and up 243 from 521 a year ago.
When the count dropped to 244 more than two years ago, 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, 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 2020 when it gained back 10 rigs.
The Sept. 23 count includes 602 rigs targeting oil, up by three from the previous week and up 181 from 421 a year ago, with 160 rigs targeting natural gas, down by two from the previous week and up 61 from 99 a year ago, and two miscellaneous rigs, unchanged from the previous week and up by one from a year ago.
Forty-six of the rigs reported Sept. 23 were drilling directional wells, 693 were drilling horizontal wells and 26 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count unchanged The rig count in New Mexico (111) was up three from the previous week. Louisiana (66), Oklahoma (65) and Pennsylvania (24) were each up by a single rig week over week.
Texas (362) was down two rigs from the previous week. Kansas (0), North Dakota (37) and West Virginia (12) were each down by a single rig.
Rig counts in other states were unchanged from the previous week: Alaska (10), California (7), Colorado (21), Ohio (11), Utah (13) and Wyoming (20).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with 10 rotary rigs active Sept. 23, unchanged from the previous week and up by five from a year ago, when the state’s rig count stood at five. Nine of the rigs in Alaska were onshore and one was offshore, unchanged from the previous week.
The rig count in the Permian, the most active basin in the country, was up by one from the previous week at 344 and up by 84 from 250 a year ago.
- KRISTEN NELSON
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