At 439, US rotary rig count is up by 7

Kristen Nelson

Petroleum News

The Baker Hughes U.S. rotary drilling rig count, 439 on April 16, was up by seven from 432 the previous week and down 90 from a count of 529 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 April 16 count includes 344 rigs targeting oil, up by seven from the previous week and down 94 from 438 a year ago, 94 rigs targeting gas, up one from the previous week and up by five from 89 a year ago, and one miscellaneous rig, down one from the previous week and down one from a year ago.

Twenty of the holes reported April 16 were directional, 398 were horizontal and 21 were vertical.

Alaska unchanged from previous week

Louisiana (47), North Dakota (15) and Oklahoma (21) were each up by a single rig.

Pennsylvania (18) was down by one rig.

Counts in other states were unchanged from the previous week: Alaska (3), California (7), Colorado (10), New Mexico (70), Ohio (10), Utah (8), West Virginia (11) and Wyoming (4).

Baker Hughes shows Alaska with three rigs active April 16, 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 three from the previous week at 227, but down by 56 from a count of 283 a year ago.

- KRISTEN NELSON