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Baker Hughes US rig up by 7 to 629
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Baker Hughes' U.S. rotary drilling rig count was 629 for the week ending March 15, up by seven rigs from 622 the previous week, and down by 125 from 754 a year ago, reversing after a drop of seven last week. The rig count increased in five of the last eight weeks and decreased in three, with a gain of 20 against a loss of 11 over the period, bucking a downward trend dominant since the beginning of May.
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.
For 2023, the count hit its low point Nov. 10 at 616, down from a high of 775 on Jan. 13, 2023. In 2022, the count bottomed out at 588 Jan. 1, reaching a high for the year of 784 on Nov. 23.
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 15 count includes 510 rigs targeting oil, up by six from the previous week and down 79 from 589 a year ago, with 116 rigs targeting natural gas, up by one from the previous week and down 46 from 162 a year ago, and three miscellaneous rigs, unchanged from the previous week and unchanged from a year ago.
Fifty-four of the rigs reported March 15 were drilling directional wells, 562 were drilling horizontal wells and 13 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count unchanged Louisiana (48) was up by five rigs from the previous week.
Texas (294) gained three rigs week over week and New Mexico (107) and West Virginia (9) were each up by a single rig.
Pennsylvania (22) was down by two rigs and Oklahoma (44) was down by one.
Rig counts in other states were unchanged from the previous week: Alaska (13), California (6), Colorado (16), Kansas (1), North Dakota (32), Ohio (12), Utah (12) and Wyoming (11).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with 13 rotary rigs active March 15, unchanged from the previous week and up by three from a year ago when the count was 10. Twelve of the Alaska rigs were onshore, unchanged from the previous week, with one rig working offshore, unchanged from the previous week.
The rig count in the Permian, the most active basin in the country, was up by three from the previous week at 316 and down by 34 from 350 a year ago.
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