US rotary drilling rig count up 9 to 767

Kristen Nelson

Petroleum News

The Baker Hughes’ U.S. rotary drilling rig count was 767 on July 29, up by nine from the previous week and up by 279 from 488 a year ago.

When the count dropped to 244 in mid-August 2020 it was the lowest the domestic rotary rig 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 2020 when it gained back 10 rigs.

The July 29 count includes 605 rigs targeting oil, up by six from the previous week and up 220 from 385 a year ago, with 157 rigs targeting natural gas, up by two from the previous week and up 54 from 103 a year ago, and five miscellaneous rigs, up by one from the previous week and up by five from a year ago.

Thirty-eight of the rigs reported July 29 were drilling directional wells, 697 were drilling horizontal wells and 32 were drilling vertical wells.

Alaska rig count unchanged

Louisiana (65), New Mexico (110), Oklahoma (64) and Pennsylvania (25) were each up by a single rig.

West Virginia (12) was down two rigs week over week.

Rig counts in other states were unchanged week over week: Alaska (10), California (7), Colorado (19), North Dakota (36), Ohio (11), Utah (12) and Wyoming (19).

Baker Hughes shows Alaska with 10 rotary rigs active July 29, unchanged from the previous week and up by five from a year ago, when the state’s rig count stood at five. Eight of the rigs in Alaska were onshore, two were offshore - also unchanged from the previous week.

The rig count in the Permian, the most active basin in the country, was up by two from the previous week at 351 and up by 108 from 243 a year ago.

- KRISTEN NELSON