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US drilling rig count up by 5 to 378
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Baker Hughes U.S. rotary drilling rig count continues to rise, up by five to 378 for the week ending Jan. 22, but still down by 416 from a count of 794 a year ago.
When the count hit 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. 22 count includes 289 rigs targeting oil, up two from the previous week but down 387 from 676 a year ago, 88 rigs targeting gas, up three from the previous week but down 27 from 115 a year ago, and one miscellaneous rig, unchanged from the previous week and down two from a year ago.
Twenty-two of the holes were directional, 338 were horizontal and 18 were vertical.
Alaska up by 2 The largest increase, up six from the previous week, was in Texas (175), which has the most active rigs in the country.
Alaska (5) was up by two; North Dakota (11), Ohio (5) and West Virginia (12) were each up by one.
Rig numbers were unchanged from the previous week in California (7), Colorado (8), Louisiana (47), Oklahoma (17), Utah (3) and Wyoming (4).
New Mexico (65) was down by five from the previous week and Pennsylvania (18) was down by one.
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with five active rigs Jan. 22, up by two from the previous week but down by five from a year ago.
The rig count in the Permian, the most active basin in the country, was down by one from the previous week at 188, and down 217 from a count of 405 a year ago.
- KRISTEN NELSON
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