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Baker Hughes US rig count jumps 7 to 544
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
Baker Hughes' U.S. rotary drilling rig count jumped to 544 on July 18, up by seven from the previous week -- the increase, the first following 11 consecutive weeks of drops, was in rigs targeting natural gas, up nine, while rigs targeting oil dropped by two. The count was down by 42 from 586 a year ago, up five from two weeks ago and down 53 since the count began to drop 12 weeks ago. This is the lowest the rig count has been since October 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 July 18 count includes 422 rigs targeting oil, down by two from the previous week and down 55 from 477 a year ago, with 108 rigs targeting natural gas, up nine from the previous week and up eight 14 103 a year ago, and five miscellaneous rigs, unchanged from the previous week and down by one from a year ago.
Forty-four of the rigs reported July 18 were drilling directional wells, 485 were drilling horizontal wells and 15 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count unchanged New Mexico (94) was up four rigs week over week. Louisiana (33) was up by two rigs while Colorado (9) and Utah (10) were each up one rig.
Texas (253) was down by two rigs.
Rig counts in other states were unchanged from the previous week: Alaska (10), California (6), North Dakota (29), Ohio (11), Oklahoma (42), Pennsylvania (17), West Virginia (7) and Wyoming (17).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with 10 rotary rigs active July 18, 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 two from the previous week at 263 and down by 42 from 305 a year ago.
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