|
US rotary rig count gains 9, now at 512
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Baker Hughes U.S. rotary drilling rig count was at 512 the week ending Sept. 17, up nine rigs from the preceding week and up 257 from 255 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.
U.S. offshore rigs, a count which includes the Gulf of Mexico where work is still recovering from Hurricane Ida, stood at six Sept. 17, unchanged from the previous week and down by eight from 14 rigs a year ago.
The Sept. 17 count includes 411 rigs targeting oil, up 10 from the previous week and up 232 from 179 a year ago, with 100 rigs targeting gas, down one from the previous week and up 27 from 73 a year ago, and one miscellaneous rig, unchanged from the previous week and down by two from a year ago.
Seventeen of the rigs reported Sept. 17 were drilling directional wells, 466 were drilling horizontal wells and 29 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count unchanged The most significant week-over-week change in state counts was Texas (239), up by four rigs from the previous week.
Oklahoma (35) gained three rigs week over week, New Mexico (84) was up by two and Pennsylvania (18) gained one rig.
Utah (11) and West Virginia (8) were each down by a single rig from the preceding week.
Counts in all other states were unchanged, week over week: Alaska (5), California (6), Colorado (11), Louisiana (39), North Dakota (22), Ohio (12) and Wyoming (18).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with five rigs active Sept. 17, 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 five from the previous week at 259 and up by 136 from a count of 123 a year ago.
| 