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Weekly US rotary rig count up by 2 at 455
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Baker Hughes U.S. rotary drilling rig count, 455 on May 21, was up by two from 453 the previous week and up by 137 from a count of 318 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 May 21 count includes 356 rigs targeting oil, up by four from the previous week and up by 119 from 237 a year ago, 99 rigs targeting gas, down by one from the previous week and up by 20 from 79 a year ago, and no miscellaneous rigs, down by one from the previous week and down by two from a year ago.
Twenty-eight of the rigs reported May 21 were drilling directional wells, 412 were drilling horizontal wells and 15 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count unchanged The Oklahoma rig count (26) was up by four from the previous week and New Mexico (72) was up by two.
Louisiana (53) and Texas (214) were each down by two rigs from the previous week.
Counts in all other states were unchanged from the previous week: Alaska (4), California (6), Colorado (10), North Dakota (16), Ohio (10), Pennsylvania (19), Utah (9), West Virginia (11) and Wyoming (4).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with four rigs active May 21, unchanged from the previous week and up by one 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 231 and up by 69 from a count of 162 a year ago.
- KRISTEN NELSON
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