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US rotary rig count drops by 11 to 497 Decrease week ending Sept. 3 driven by Hurricane Ida in the Gulf of Mexico, with rigs there down to zero from 14 the previous week Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Baker Hughes U.S. rotary drilling rig count was 497 the week ending Sept. 3, down 11 from 508 the previous week, with that drop driven by rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, where the count went from 14 the previous week to zero as Hurricane Ida closed down activity. The U.S. count was up from 241 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, stood at two Sept. 3, down by 13 from 15 the previous week and down by 13 from 15 rigs a year ago.
The Sept. 3 count includes 394 rigs targeting oil, down by 16 from the previous week and up 213 from 181 a year ago, with 102 rigs targeting gas, up by five from the previous week and up by 30 from 72 a year ago, and one miscellaneous rig, unchanged from the previous week and down by two from a year ago.
Eleven of the rigs reported Sept. 3 were drilling directional wells, 463 were drilling horizontal wells and 23 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count up by one The most significant week-over-week change in state counts was Louisiana (35), down by 14 from the previous week on Hurricane Ida.
Alaska (5), New Mexico (82) and Oklahoma (32) were each up by a single rig.
Counts in all other states were unchanged, week-over-week: California (6), Colorado (11), Naorth Dakota (22), Ohio (12), Pennsylvania (19), Texas (232), Utah (11), West Virginia (9) and Wyoming (18).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with five rigs active Sept. 3, up by one 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 two one the previous week at 250 and up by 125 from a count of 125 a year ago.
International rig count up by 26 Baker Hughes has reported the international rig count monthly since 1975. International rigs exclude North America, a count included in the company’s worldwide figures.
The international rig count for August, 777, was up by 26 rigs from a July count of 751, with land rigs up by 15 to 590 and offshore rigs up 11 to 187. The international count is up 30 rigs from 747 a year ago, with land rigs up 27 and offshore rigs up three.
For August, the U.S. rig count averaged 501, up 17 from July’s average of 484 and up 251 year-over-year.
The average rig count for Canada was 156 in August, up 11 from July’s average of 145 and up 103 year-over-year.
The worldwide count, international and North America combined, was 1,434 in August, up 54 from 1,380 in July and up 384 from 1,050 in August 2020. The U.S. accounts for the largest number of rigs worldwide, 501 in August, followed by the Middle East at 261, Asia Pacific at 198, Canada at 156, Latin America at 138, Europe at 105 and Africa at 75.
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