US rotary rig count unchanged at 470

Kristen Nelson

Petroleum News

The Baker Hughes U.S. rotary drilling rig count was 470 the week ending June 24, unchanged from the previous week and up by 205 from 265 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 June 25 count includes 372 rigs targeting oil, down one from the previous week and up 184 from 188 a year ago, 98 rigs targeting gas, up by one from the previous week and up by 23 from 75 a year ago, and no miscellaneous rigs, unchanged from the previous week and down by two from a year ago.

Thirty of the rigs reported June 25 were drilling directional wells, 421 were drilling horizontal wells and 19 were drilling vertical wells.

Alaska rig count up by one

Rig counts in all other states were unchanged from the previous week: Colorado (10), Louisiana (52), New Mexico (75), North Dakota (17), Ohio (9), Oklahoma (27), Pennsylvania (18), Texas (221), Utah (10, West Virginia (9) and Wyoming (10).

Baker Hughes shows Alaska with four rigs active June 25, up one from the previous week and up 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 down by one from the previous week at 236 and up by 105 from a count of 131 a year ago.

- KRISTEN NELSON