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US rotary rig count gains 3, now at 491
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
After dropping by three the week ending July 30, the Baker Hughes U.S. rotary drilling rig count gained back three rigs and was at 491 the week ending Aug. 6, up by 244 from 247 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 Aug. 6 count includes 387 rigs targeting oil, up two from the previous week and up 211 from 176 a year ago, with 103 rigs targeting gas, unchanged from the previous week and up by 34 from 69 a year ago, and one miscellaneous rig, up by one from the previous week and down by one from a year ago.
Twenty-seven of the rigs reported Aug. 6 were drilling directional wells, 449 were drilling horizontal wells and 15 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count unchanged Wyoming (16) was up three rigs from the previous week.
New Mexico (75) and Oklahoma (31) were each up by one rig.
California (5) and Texas (229) were each down by a single rig.
Rig counts in all other states were unchanged from the previous week: Alaska (5), Colorado (11), Louisiana (48), North Dakota (19), Ohio (11), Pennsylvania (19), Utah (10) and West Virginia (10).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with five rigs active Aug. 6, unchanged 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 unchanged from the previous week at 243 and up by 121 from a count of 122 a year ago.
International count down by seven Baker Hughes has reported the international rig count monthly since 1975. International rigs exclude North America, a count included in the company’s worldwide figures.
The international rig count for July, 751, was down by seven rigs from a June count of 758, with land rigs up by three to 575 and offshore rigs down by 10 to 176. The international count is up eight rigs from 743 a year ago, with land rigs up 15 and offshore rigs down seven.
For July, the U.S. rig count averaged 484, up 20 from June’s count of 464 and up 229 year-over-year.
The average rig count for Canada was 145 in July, up 42 from June’s count of 103 and up 113 year-over-year.
The worldwide count, international and North America combined, was 1,380 in July, up 55 from 1,325 in June and up 350 for 1,030 in July 2020. The U.S. accounts for the largest number of rigs worldwide, 484 in July, followed by the Middle East at 263, Asia Pacific at 187, Canada at 145, Latin America at 134, Europe at 99 and Africa at 68.
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