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US drilling rig count drops one to 402
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Baker Hughes U.S. rotary drilling rig count, 402 for the week ending March 12, was down by one from the week ending March 5 and down 390 from a count of 792 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 March 12 count includes 309 rigs targeting oil, down one from the previous week and down 374 from 683 a year ago, 92 rigs targeting gas, unchanged from the previous week but down 15 from 107 a year ago, and one miscellaneous rig, unchanged from the previous week and down one from a year ago.
Fifteen of the holes reported March 12 were directional, 362 were horizontal and 25 were vertical.
Alaska unchanged from previous week Ohio (9) was up by two rigs from the previous week; Texas (203) and West Virginia (12) were each up by one.
Pennsylvania (18) was down by two rigs; New Mexico (60), North Dakota (12) and Oklahoma (16) were each down by one.
Rig counts in the remaining states were unchanged from the previous week: Alaska (3), California (7), Colorado (8), Louisiana (45), Utah (3) and Wyoming (5).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with three rigs active March 12, unchanged from the previous week and down by seven from a year ago, when the state’s count stood at 10.
The rig count in the Permian, the most active basin in the country, was up by one from the previous week at 212, but down by 206 from a count of 418 a year ago.
- KRISTEN NELSON
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