Baker Hughes US rig count down 2 to 542
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Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
Baker Hughes' U.S. rotary drilling rig count was 542 on July 25, down by two from the previous week ' a return to decreases in the rig count after a gain of seven rigs, all targeting natural gas, the preceding week. Over the past 12 weeks, only last week had an increase, with the overall count down by 45 over the period. The count was down by 47 from 589 a year ago and down five from two weeks ago. This is the lowest the rig count has been since October 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 July 25 count includes 415 rigs targeting oil, down by seven from the previous week and down 67 from 482 a year ago, with 122 rigs targeting natural gas, up five from the previous week and up 21 from 101 a year ago, and five miscellaneous rigs, unchanged from the previous week and down by one from a year ago.
Forty-seven of the rigs reported July 25 were drilling directional wells, 483 were drilling horizontal wells and 12 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count down by 1 Colorado (12) was up three rigs from the previous week.
Louisiana (35) was up by two rigs while Pennsylvania (18) was up one rig.
Texas (249) was down by four rigs and Wyoming (15) was down two. Alaska (9) and New Mexico (93) were each down by a single rig.
Rig counts in other states were unchanged from the previous week: California (6), North Dakota (29), Ohio (11), Oklahoma (42), Utah (10) and West Virginia (7).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with nine rotary rigs active July 25, down by one from the previous week and down by one from a year ago when the state's count was 10.
The rig count in the Permian, the most active basin in the country, was down by three from the previous week at 260 and down by 44 from 304 a year ago.
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