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Baker Hughes US rig count up by 3 to 625
International rig count 978 for November, up 16 from October, with 758 land rigs and 220 offshore rigs, compared to 910 a year ago
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Baker Hughes' U.S. rotary drilling rig count was 625 for the week ending Dec. 1, up by three rigs from the previous week, and down by 159 from 784 a year ago. The rig count has been up in six and down in two of the last eight weeks, with a gain of 13 against losses of 11, a reverse in a downward trend dominant since the beginning of May.
A drop of 17 on May 12 was the steepest drop since June of 2020, during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Dec. 1 count is the lowest since Feb. 4, 2022, when the count was 613. The count dropped below 700 the week ending June 2, the first time it has been that low since April 2022. This week's count is down from a high so far this year of 775 on Jan. 13. The high for 2022 was a count of 784 rigs at the beginning of December.
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 Dec. 1 count includes 505 rigs targeting oil, up by five from the previous week and down by 122 from 627 a year ago, with 116 rigs targeting natural gas, down one from the previous week and down 39 from 155 a year ago, and four miscellaneous rigs, down one from the previous week and up by two from a year ago.
Fifty-four of the rigs reported Dec. 1 were drilling directional wells, 559 were drilling horizontal wells and 12 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count unchanged Texas (306) was up by three rigs from the previous week.
North Dakota (32) and Pennsylvania (21) were each up by a single rig.
California (4) was down one rig week over week.
Rig counts in other states were unchanged from the previous week: Alaska (10), Colorado (17), Louisiana (41), New Mexico (106), Ohio (12), Oklahoma (38), Utah (12), West Virginia (8) and Wyoming (16).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with 10 rotary rigs active Dec. 1, unchanged from the previous week and unchanged from a year ago when the count was also 10. Nine of the Alaska rigs were onshore, up by one 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 314 and down by 36 from 350 a year ago.
International count up by 16 Baker Hughes' international rig count for November, issued Dec. 1, is up by 16 rigs from October at 978, with land rigs up 15 to 758 and offshore rigs up by one to 220. Compared to the November 2023 count of 910, this November's international count is up by 68, with land rigs up by 70 and offshore rigs down two.
Baker Hughes began providing a monthly international rig count in 1975. The international count excludes North America, which is included in the company's worldwide figures.
The Middle East accounted for the most rigs in the international totals for November, 347, followed by Asia Pacific with 218, Latin America with 175, Africa with 120 and Europe with 118.
The U.S. rig count averaged 619 in November, down four from October, and down 160 from November 2022, while the Canadian count for November averaged 197, up by five from October and down by four from November 2022.
Worldwide the rig count was 1,794 in November, up by 17 from 1,777 in October and down 96 from 1,890 last November.
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