Slight turnaround in rig count, up by 10

Kristen Nelson

Petroleum News

The Baker Hughes U.S. rotary rig count made a slight correction the week ending Aug. 21, up 10 rigs from the previous week for a count of 254, but down 662 from 916 a year ago.

Beginning May 8, when the count dropped to 374 rigs, it dropped for 12 consecutive weeks, hitting 251 on July 24 and maintaining that count for a week before dropping again the first two weeks of August.

The Houston oilfield services company has issued a weekly rig count since 1944.

Prior to this year, the low was 404 rigs in May 2016.

The increase was in rigs targeting oil, up 11 to 183 from the previous week, although still down 571 from a count of 754 a year ago. There were 69 rigs targeting natural gas, down one from the previous week, and down 93 from 162 a year ago. Two rigs were listed as miscellaneous, unchanged from last week and up two from a year ago.

Twenty of the holes were directional, 221 were horizontal and 13 were vertical.

Alaska count unchanged

West Virginia (8) was up by three rigs from the previous week, New Mexico (47) was up by two rigs and Louisiana (32) was up by one.

Rig counts were unchanged for Alaska (3), California (4), Colorado (5), Oklahoma (11) and Wyoming (1).

North Dakota (10) and Ohio (5) were each down by one rig from the previous week; Pennsylvania (18) was down by two.

Baker Hughes shows Alaska with three active rigs Aug. 21, unchanged from the previous week and down by five from a year ago.

The rig count in the nation’s most active basin, the Permian (127), was up by 10 rigs from the previous week and down by 307 from a count of 434 a year ago.

Baker Hughes has issued weekly rig counts for the U.S. and Canada since 1944 and began issuing international rig counts in 1975.

The U.S. rig count peaked at 4,530 in 1981. The low count, 244, was set the week ending Aug. 14; prior to declines which began in May of this year, the previous low was 404 rigs in May 2016.

- KRISTEN NELSON