Baker Hughes US rig count up 5 at 551
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Texas up 6 week over week; January international rig count 1079, up 14 from December, with land rigs up 3 and offshore rigs up 11
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
Baker Hughes' U.S. rotary drilling rig count was 551 on Feb. 6, up by five from the previous week and down 35 from 586 a year ago. The domestic rig count has ranged from the 530s through the 550s since the beginning of June.
For 2025, the count peaked Feb. 28 (and again March 21) at 593, hitting its low point Aug. 29 at 526. 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.
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.
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 Feb. 6 count includes 412 rigs targeting oil, up by one from the previous week and down 68 from 480 a year ago, with 130 rigs targeting natural gas, up by five from the previous week and up 30 from 100 a year ago, and nine miscellaneous rigs, down by one from the previous week and up by three from a year ago.
Fifty-five of the rigs reported Feb. 6 were drilling directional wells, 483 were drilling horizontal wells and 13 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count unchanged Texas (232) was up by six rigs from the previous week, while Louisiana (39) was up by one.
California (7) and New Mexico (101) were each down by a single rig.
Rig counts in other states were unchanged from the previous week: Alaska (9), Colorado (14), North Dakota (27), Ohio (13), Oklahoma (46), Pennsylvania (19), Utah (16), West Virginia (7) and Wyoming (16).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with nine rotary rigs active Feb. 3, unchanged 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 one from the previous week at 241 and down by 62 from 303 a year ago.
International rig count up 14 in January Baker Hughes' monthly international rig count for January, issued Feb. 6, was 1,079, up by 14 from December and down 20 from a count of 1,099 in January 2025, with land rigs up three to 839, month over month, and offshore rigs up 11 to 231.
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 January, 518, followed by Asia Pacific with 206, Latin America with 136, Europe with 119 and Africa with 100.
The U.S. rig count averaged 545 in January, down by one from 546 in December and down 38 from January 2025, while the Canadian count for January averaged 197, up by 26 from 172 in December and up 11 from January 2025.
Worldwide the rig count averaged 1,821 in January, up 39 from 1,783 in December and down 69 from 1,890 in January 2025.
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