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Weekly US rotary rig count again up by 2
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Baker Hughes U.S. rotary drilling rig count had another week of slow but steady gains, up by two to 457 on May 28, the same gain as the previous week and up by 156 from 301 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 May 28 count includes 359 rigs targeting oil, up by three from the previous week and up by 137 from 222 a year ago, 98 rigs targeting gas, down by one from the previous week and up by 21 from 77 a year ago, and no miscellaneous rigs, unchanged from the previous week and down by two from a year ago.
Twenty-seven of the rigs reported May 28 were drilling directional wells, 415 were drilling horizontal wells and 15 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count unchanged The Texas rig count (218) was up by four from the previous week and Oklahoma (28) was up by two.
Colorado (9) and New Mexico (71) were each down by one rig; Pennsylvania (17) was down by two.
Counts in all other states were unchanged from the previous week: Alaska (4), California (6), Louisiana (53), North Dakota (16), Ohio (10), Utah (9), West Virginia (11) and Wyoming (4).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with four rigs active May 28, unchanged from the previous week and up by 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 up by two from the previous week at 233 and up by 85 from a count of 148 a year ago.
- KRISTEN NELSON
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