US rotary rig count down by 1 to 438

Kristen Nelson

Petroleum News

The Baker Hughes U.S. rotary drilling rig count, 438 on April 23, was down by one from 439 the previous week and down 27 from a count of 465 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 April 23 count includes 343 rigs targeting oil, down by one from the previous week and down 35 from 378 a year ago, 94 rigs targeting gas, unchanged from the previous week and up by nine from 85 a year ago, and one miscellaneous rig, unchanged from the previous week and down one from a year ago.

Nineteen of the holes reported April 23 were directional, 397 were horizontal and 22 were vertical.

Alaska unchanged from previous week

Texas (211), with the most active rigs in the country, was down by three rigs.

Counts in all other states were unchanged from the previous week: Alaska (3), California (7), Colorado (10), Louisiana (47), North Dakota (15), Ohio (10), Oklahoma (21), Pennsylvania (18), Utah (8), West Virginia (11) and Wyoming (4).

Baker Hughes shows Alaska with three rigs active April 23, unchanged from the previous week and unchanged from a year ago, when the state’s count also stood at three.

The rig count in the Permian, the most active basin in the country, was down by one from the previous week at 226 and down by 20 from a count of 246 a year ago.

- KRISTEN NELSON