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Baker Hughes rig count rises by 7 to 528
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
For the week ending Oct. 1, the Baker Hughes U.S. rotary drilling rig count was up by seven rigs from the preceding week to 528, an increase of 262 from 266 a year ago.
When the count dropped to 244 in mid-August 2020 it was the lowest the domestic rotary rig 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 2020 when it gained back 10 rigs.
The Oct. 1 count includes 428 rigs targeting oil, up seven from the previous week and up 239 from 189 a year ago, with 99 rigs targeting gas, unchanged from the previous week and up 25 from 74 a year ago, and one miscellaneous rig, unchanged from the previous week and down by two from a year ago.
Twenty-two of the rigs reported Oct. 1 were drilling directional wells, 474 were drilling horizontal wells and 32 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count unchanged Louisiana (46) had the largest week-over-week gain, up three rigs.
New Mexico (86) gained two rigs from the previous week.
Oklahoma (40) and Texas (243) each gained a single rig.
Counts in all other states were unchanged, week over week: Alaska (5), California (6), Colorado (11), North Dakota (22), Ohio (12), Pennsylvania (18), Utah (10), West Virginia (8) and Wyoming (18).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with five rigs active Oct. 1, unchanged from the previous week and up three from a year ago, when the state’s count stood at two.
The rig count in the Permian, the most active basin in the country, was up by three from the previous week at 263 and up by 134 from a count of 129 a year ago.
International count up 10 Baker Huges issues its international rig count monthly, information it began providing in 1975. The company said international rigs exclude North America; those rigs are included in worldwide figures.
The international count for September, issued Oct. 1, is up by 10 from August to 787, Baker Hughes said, with land rigs up by 10 to 600 and offshore rigs unchanged at 187.
The international count is up by 85 rigs from the comparable count in 2020, 702, with land rigs up by 76 and offshore rigs up by nine.
The Middle East accounts for the most rigs in the international count, 269 in September, followed by Asia Pacific with 194, Latin America with 140, Europe with 106 and Africa with 78.
The U.S. rig count averaged 508 in September, up seven from August’s count of 501 rigs, and up by 251 from September 2020, while the Canadian count for September averaged 153, down by three from an August count of 156 and up by 93 from September 2020.
Worldwide the rig count was 1,448 in September, up by 14 from 1,434 counted in August and up by 429 from a count of 1,019 last September.
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