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Baker Hughes US rig count drops 10 to 566
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
Baker Hughes' U.S. rotary drilling rig count was 576 on May 23, down by 10 from the previous week, down by 34 from 600 a year ago and down by 12 from two weeks ago. Over the last eight weeks the rig count was up in two weeks and down in six with a combined loss of 30 against a gain of four. This is the lowest the rig count has been since November 2021.
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 2024, the count peaked March 1 (and again March 15) at 629, hitting its low point June 28 at 581. In 2023 the count peaked early in the year at 775 on Jan. 13, bottoming out Nov. 10 at 616.
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 May 23 count includes 465 rigs targeting oil, down by eight from the previous week and down 32 from 497 a year ago, with 98 rigs targeting natural gas, down by two from the previous week and down one from 99 a year ago, and three miscellaneous rigs, unchanged from the previous week and down by one from a year ago.
Forty-two of the rigs reported May 23 were drilling directional wells, 511 were drilling horizontal wells and 13 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count unchanged Ohio (12) was up two rigs from the previous week and Wyoming (21) was up one.
Texas (266) was down five rigs week over week; New Mexico (92), North Dakota (30) and Oklahoma (53) were each down by two; Pennsylvania (17) and Utah (11) were each down one rig.
Rig counts in other states were unchanged from the previous week: Alaska (10), California (6), Colorado (8), Louisiana (30) and West Virginia (8).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with 10 rotary rigs active May 23, unchanged from the previous week and up by one from a year ago when the state's count was nine.
The rig count in the Permian, the most active basin in the country, was down by three from the previous week at 279 and down by 33 from 312 a year ago.
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