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US rotary rig count jumps by 13 to 430
Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
The Baker Hughes U.S. rotary drilling rig count, 430 on April 1, was up by 13 from 417 the week ending March 26 and down 234 from a count of 664 a year ago.
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 April 1 count includes 337 rigs targeting oil, up 13 from the previous week and down 225 from 563 a year ago, 91 rigs targeting gas, down one from the previous week and down nine from 100 a year ago, and two miscellaneous rigs, up one from the previous week and unchanged from a year ago.
Nineteen of the holes reported April 1 were directional, 391 were horizontal and 20 were vertical.
Alaska unchanged from previous week Texas (209), with the most active rigs in the country, was up by four rigs from the previous week.
New Mexico (70) was up by three rigs, while Oklahoma (19) and Utah (6) were each up by two rigs.
Colorado (10), Louisiana (47) and Pennsylvania (19) each gained a single rig.
West Virginia (11) was down by one rig from the previous week.
The count in all other states was unchanged: Alaska (3), California (7), North Dakota (14), Ohio (9) and Wyoming (5).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with three rigs active April 1, unchanged from the previous week and down by five from a year ago, when the state’s count stood at eight.
The rig count in the Permian, the most active basin in the country, was up by three from the previous week at 224, but down by 127 from a count of 351 a year ago.
International count up Baker Hughes said April 1 that the international rig count for March (which excludes North America) was up 14 rigs from February at 715, with land rigs up 10 to 546 and offshore rigs up four to 169, but down 344 rigs from last year when the count stood at 1,059, with land rigs down 269 and offshore rigs down by 75.
The average U.S. rig count for March was 408, up 10 from a February count of 398 and down 364 year-over-year.
In Canada the March rig count averaged 108, down 62 from a February count of 171 and down 364 from last March.
All rigs combined - Baker Hughes’ worldwide count - was 1,231 in March, down 38 from 1,270 counted in February and down 733 from 1,964 in March 2020.
Baker Hughes has issued weekly rig counts for the U.S. and Canada since 1944 and began issuing monthly international rig counts in 1975.
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