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US rotary rig count hits 500, up by 9
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Baker Hughes U.S. rotary drilling rig count hit 500 the week ending Aug. 13, up by nine from 491 the previous week and up by 256 from 244 a year ago.
That count of 244 in mid-August 2020 was the lowest the domestic rotary rig 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 2020 when it gained back 10 rigs.
The Aug. 13 count includes 397 rigs targeting oil, up by 10 from the previous week and up 225 from 172 a year ago, with 102 rigs targeting gas, down by one from the previous week and up by 32 from 70 a year ago, and one miscellaneous rig, unchanged from the previous week and down by one from a year ago.
Twenty-seven of the rigs reported Aug. 13 were drilling directional wells, 456 were drilling horizontal wells and 17 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count down by one The New Mexico rig count, 79, was up by four rigs from the previous week.
Texas (232) was up by three rigs.
North Dakota (21) gained two rigs while California (6) was up by one.
Alaska (4), Louisiana (47) and Oklahoma (30) were each down by a single rig from the previous week.
Rig counts in all other states were unchanged from the previous week: Colorado (11), Ohio (11), Pennsylvania (19), Utah (10), West Virginia (10) and Wyoming (16).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with four rigs active Aug. 13, down by 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 up by two from the previous week at 245 and up by 128 from a count of 117 a year ago.
- KRISTEN NELSON
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