US drilling rig count gains 6 to 733

Kristen Nelson

Petroleum News

The Baker Hughes’ U.S. rotary drilling rig count was 733 on June 10, up by six from the previous week and up by 272 from 461 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 June 10 count includes 580 rigs targeting oil, up by six rigs from the previous week and up 215 from 365 a year ago, with 151 rigs targeting natural gas, unchanged from the previous week and up 55 from 96 a year ago, and two miscellaneous rigs, unchanged from the previous week and unchanged from a year ago.

Thirty-eight of the rigs reported June 3 were drilling directional wells, 668 were drilling horizontal wells and 27 were drilling vertical wells.

Alaska rig count unchanged

Louisiana (62) and Utah (14) were each up by a single rig.

Texas (356) was down a single rig week over week.

Rig counts in all other states were unchanged week over week: Alaska (8), California (6), Colorado (16), North Dakota (35), Ohio (12), Oklahoma (59), Pennsylvania (25), West Virginia (14) and Wyoming (18).

Baker Hughes shows Alaska with eight rotary rigs active June 10, unchanged from the previous week and up by five from a year ago, when the state’s rig count stood at three. Seven of the rigs in Alaska were onshore, one was offshore - also unchanged week over week.

The rig count in the Permian, the most active basin in the country, was up by three from the previous week at 345 and up by 109 from 236 a year ago.

- KRISTEN NELSON