US rotary rig count grows again, up by 7

Kristen Nelson

Petroleum News

The Baker Hughes U.S. rotary drilling rig count was at 491 the week ending July 23, a gain of seven from the previous week’s count of 484 and up by 240 from 251 a year ago. The count has increased every week in July.

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 July 23 count includes 387 rigs targeting oil, up by seven from the previous week and up 206 from 181 a year ago, 104 rigs targeting gas, unchanged from the previous week and up by 36 from 68 a year ago, and no miscellaneous rigs, unchanged from the previous week and down by two from a year ago.

Thirty-three of the rigs reported July 23 were drilling directional wells, 439 were drilling horizontal wells and 19 were drilling vertical wells.

Alaska rig count unchanged

Utah (12) was up by two and Oklahoma (30) was up by a single rig.

Louisiana (52) was down by two rigs.

Rig counts in all other states were unchanged from the previous week: Alaska (5), California (6), Colorado (12), New Mexico (75), North Dakota (18), Ohio (10), Pennsylvania (18), West Virginia (10) and Wyoming (23).

Baker Hughes shows Alaska with five rigs active July 23, unchanged from the previous week and up two from a year ago, when the state’s count stood at three.

The rig count in the Permian, the most active basin in the country, was up by four from the previous week at 242 and up by 116 from a count of 126 a year ago.

- KRISTEN NELSON