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US rotary rig count gains 9, now at 470
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Baker Hughes U.S. rotary drilling rig count was 470 the week ending June 18, up by nine from 461 the previous week and up by 204 from 266 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 June 18 count includes 373 rigs targeting oil, up eight from the previous week and up 184 from 189 a year ago, 97 rigs targeting gas, up by one from the previous week and up by 22 from 75 a year ago, and no miscellaneous rigs, unchanged from the previous week and down by two from a year ago.
Twenty-five of the rigs reported June 18 were drilling directional wells, 425 were drilling horizontal wells and 20 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count unchanged Wyoming (10) was up by three rigs from the previous week.
Pennsylvania (18) and Texas (221) were each up by two rigs.
California (7), Colorado (10), North Dakota (17), Ohio (9) and Utah (10) were each up by a single rig.
West Virginia (9) was down three rigs from the previous week and Oklahoma (27) was down by one rig.
Rig counts in Alaska (3), Louisiana (52) and New Mexico (75) were unchanged from the previous week.
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with three rigs active June 18, 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 up by one from the previous week at 237 and up by 105 from a count of 132 a year ago.
US well servicing rigs The U.S. well servicing rig count increased slightly in April, the Energy Workforce & Technology Council reported June 16, but numbers are still below pre-pandemic levels.
The council, which began publishing a monthly well service rig count in 1970, compiles data from oil and gas producers and servicing companies throughout North America.
The U.S. active well service rig count was 936 in April, up 1.4% from March, and the highest level since March 2020, the onset of the COVID pandemic. The pandemic low for well services rigs was 456 in April 2020, the council said, and the April count of 936 “remains 10.5% below the February 2020 total of 1,046 rigs.”
The council said the rig utilization rate remained steady at 37%, up from lows of 17% in April and May 2020, but below pre-pandemic norms around 45%.
The council does not break rig counts out by state, but by regions, with Alaska reported as part of the West Coast. Highest well servicing rig counts are in West Texas/Permian, which accounted for 300 out of the 936 total in April; there were 125 well servicing rigs active in the West Coast/Alaska region.
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