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US drilling rig count up by 2 to 348
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Baker Hughes U.S. rotary drilling rig count continued to increase, up by two to 348 when the Christmas week count was released Dec. 23, still down substantially, by 457, from a count of 805 a year ago.
When the count hit 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 Dec. 23 count includes 264 rigs targeting oil, up one from the previous week but down 413 from 677 a year ago, 83 rigs targeting gas, up by two from the previous week but down 42 from 125 a year ago, and one miscellaneous rig, down by one from the previous week and down two from a year ago.
Twenty-two of the holes were directional, 309 were horizontal and 17 were vertical.
Alaska count down by one Louisiana (43) was up by three rigs from the previous week, Oklahoma (16) was up by two and Texas (159), which has the most active rigs in the country, was up by one rig.
Alaska (2), Colorado (6), New Mexico (65) and West Virginia (8) were each down by one rig week-over-week.
Rig counts were unchanged in the remaining states: California (6), North Dakota (11), Ohio (5), Pennsylvania (19), Utah (3) and West Virginia (9).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with two active rigs Dec. 23, down one from the previous week and down five from a year ago.
The rig count in the Permian, the most active basin in the country, was down by one from the previous week at 173, and down 232 from a count of 405 a year ago.
- KRISTEN NELSON
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