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US rig count continues to rise, up by 6
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Baker Hughes U.S. rotary drilling rig count continues to rise, up by six to 384 for the week ending Jan. 29, but still down substantially, by 406, from a count of 790 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 Jan. 29 count includes 295 rigs targeting oil, up six from the previous week but down 380 from 675 a year ago, 88 rigs targeting gas, unchanged from the previous week but down 24 from 112 a year ago, and one miscellaneous rig, unchanged from the previous week and down two from a year ago.
Eighteen of the holes reported Jan. 29 were directional, 344 were horizontal and 22 were vertical.
Alaska down by 1 The largest increase, up seven from the previous week, was in Texas (182), which has the most active rigs in the country.
North Dakota (12), Oklahoma (18) and Wyoming (5) were each up by one rig.
Rig numbers were unchanged from the previous week in California (7), Colorado (8), Louisiana (47), Ohio (5), Pennsylvania (18), Utah (3) and West Virginia (12).
New Mexico (62) was down by three rigs from the previous week and Alaska (4) was down by one.
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with four active rigs Jan. 29, down by one from the previous week and down by five from a year ago, when the state’s count stood at nine.
The rig count in the Permian, the most active basin in the country, was up by four from the previous week at 192, but down by 214 from a count of 406 a year ago.
- KRISTEN NELSON
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