US rotary rig count at 479, a gain of 4

Kristen Nelson

petroleum News

The Baker Hughes U.S. rotary drilling rig count was at 479 the week ending July 9, a gain of four from the previous week’s count of 475 and up by 221 from 258 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 July 9 count includes 378 rigs targeting oil, up by two from the previous week and up 197 from 181 a year ago, 101 rigs targeting gas, up by two from the previous week and up by 26 from 75 a year ago, and no miscellaneous rigs, unchanged from the previous week and down by two from a year ago.

Thirty-one of the rigs reported July 9 were drilling directional wells, 433 were drilling horizontal wells and 15 were drilling vertical wells.

Alaska rig count unchanged

Louisiana (53), Ohio (10), West Virginia (10) and Wyoming (10) were each up by one rig week-over-week.

Colorado (12) and Pennsylvania (18) were each down by one rig.

Rig counts in all other states were unchanged from the previous week: Alaska (4), California (6), New Mexico (75), North Dakota (18), Oklahoma (27) and Utah (10).

Baker Hughes shows Alaska with four rigs active July 9, unchanged from the previous week and up one from a year ago, when the state’s count stood at three.

The rig count in the Permian, the most active basin in the country, was unchanged from the previous week at 237 and up by 112 from a count of 125 a year ago.

- KRISTEN NELSON