Baker Hughes US rig count up by 1 at 551

Texas has largest month-over-month gain, up 6; international count for February up by 33 at 1,112, largest gains on land rigs

Kristen Nelson

Petroleum News

Baker Hughes- U.S. rotary drilling rig count was 551 on March 6, up by one from the previous week and down 41 from 592 a year ago. The domestic rig count has ranged from the 530s through the 550s since the beginning of June.

For 2025, the count peaked Feb. 28 (and again March 21) at 593, hitting its low point Aug. 29 at 526. For 2024, the count peaked March 1 (and again March 15) at 629, hitting its low point June 28 at 581. In 2023 the count peaked early in the year at 775 on Jan. 13, bottoming out Nov. 10 at 616.

A drop of 17 to 731 on May 12, 2023, was the steepest weekly drop since June of 2020, during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the count also dropped by 17 to 284 on June 5, following drops as steep as 73 rigs in one week in April. The count continued down to 251 at the end of July 2020, reaching an all-time low of 244 in mid-August 2020.

When the count dropped to 244 in mid-August 2020, it was the lowest the domestic rotary rig count had 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 prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, where it remained through mid-March of that year 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 March 6 count includes 411 rigs targeting oil, up by four from the previous week and down 75 from 486 a year ago, with 132 rigs targeting natural gas, down by two from the previous week and up 31 from 101 a year ago, and eight miscellaneous rigs, down by one from the previous week and up by three from a year ago.

Fifty of the rigs reported March 6 were drilling directional wells, 485 were drilling horizontal wells and 13 were drilling vertical wells.

Alaska rig count unchanged

Texas (236) was up six rigs from the previous week and West Virginia (8) was up by a single rig.

New Mexico (100) and Ohio (11) were each down by two rigs week over week, while Louisiana (36) and North Dakota (25) were each down by a single rig.

Rig counts in other states were unchanged from the previous week: Alaska (11), California (7), Colorado (14), Oklahoma (45), Pennsylvania (20), Utah (16) and Wyoming (17).

Baker Hughes shows Alaska with 11 rotary rigs active March 6, unchanged from the previous week and up by one from a year ago when the state- s count was 10.

The rig count in the Permian, the most active basin in the country, was up by one from the previous week at 241 and down by 63 from 304 a year ago.

International rig count up 33 in February

Baker Hughes- monthly international rig count for February, issued March 6, was 1,112, up by 33 from January and up 15 from a count of 1,097 in February 2025, with land rigs up 25 to 873, month over month, and offshore rigs up eight to 239.

Baker Hughes began providing a monthly international rig count in 1975. The international count excludes North America, which is included in the company- s worldwide figures.

The Middle East accounted for the most rigs in the international totals for February, 538, followed by Asia Pacific with 207, Latin America with 138, Europe with 126 and Africa with 103.

The U.S. rig count averaged 551 in February, up by six from 546 in January and down 39 from February 2025, while the Canadian count for February averaged 222, up by 25 from 197 in January and down 25 from February 2025.

Worldwide the rig count averaged 1,885 in February, up 64 from 1,821 in January and down 49 from 1,933 in February 2025.