US drilling rig count grows by 5 to 402

Kristen Nelson

Petroleum News

The Baker Hughes U.S. rotary drilling rig count, 402 for the week ending Feb. 26, was up by five from the week ending Feb. 19 and down 388 from a count of 790 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 Feb. 26 count includes 309 rigs targeting oil, up by four from the previous week and down 369 from 678 a year ago, 92 rigs targeting gas, up one the previous week but down 18 from 110 a year ago, and one miscellaneous rig, unchanged from the previous week and down one from a year ago.

Eighteen of the holes reported Feb. 26 were directional, 359 were horizontal and 25 were vertical.

Alaska unchanged from previous week

Pennsylvania (20) was up by two rigs and New Mexico (62) was up by one.

West Virginia (11) was down by one rig from the previous week.

Counts in all other states remained unchanged: Alaska (3), California (7), Colorado (8), Louisiana (47), North Dakota (14), Ohio (7), Oklahoma (17), Utah (3), West Virginia (12) and Wyoming (5).

Baker Hughes shows Alaska with three rigs active Feb. 26, 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 four from the previous week at 208, but down by 203 from a count of 411 a year ago.

- KRISTEN NELSON