Alaska's source for oil and gas news
Alaska's source for oil and gas news
Baker Hughes’ U.S. rotary drilling rig count was 553 on March 13, up by two from the previous week and down 39 from 592 a year ago. The domestic rig count has ranged from the 530s through the 550s since the beginning of June.
For 2025, the count peaked Feb. 28 (and again March 21) at 593, hitting its low point Aug. 29 at 526. For 2024, the count peaked March 1 (and again March 15) at 629, hitting its low point June 28 at 581. In 2023 the count peaked early in the year at 775 on Jan. 13, bottoming out Nov. 10 at 616.
A drop of 17 to 731 on May 12, 2023, was the steepest weekly drop since June of 2020, during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the count also dropped by 17 to 284 on June 5, following drops as steep as 73 rigs in one week in April. The count continued down to 251 at the end of July 2020, reaching an all-time low of 244 in mid-August 2020.
When the count dropped to 244 in mid-August 2020, it was the lowest the domestic rotary rig count had 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 prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, where it remained through mid-March of that year 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 March 13 count includes 412 rigs targeting oil, up by one from the previous week and down 75 from 487 a year ago, with 133 rigs targeting natural gas, up by one from the previous week and up 33 from 100 a year ago, and eight miscellaneous rigs, unchanged from the previous week and up by three from a year ago.
Fifty-four of the rigs reported March 13 were drilling directional wells, 485 were drilling horizontal wells and 12 were drilling vertical wells.
Alaska rig count unchanged
Louisiana (40) was up four rigs from the previous week. New Mexico (101) and Utah (17) were each up by one rig.
Texas (234) was down by two rigs week over week. North Dakota (24) and Oklahoma (44) were each down by a single rig.
Rig counts in other states were unchanged from the previous week: Alaska (11), California (7), Colorado (14), Ohio (11), Pennsylvania (20), West Virginia (8) and Wyoming (17).
Baker Hughes shows Alaska with 11 rotary rigs active March 13, unchanged from the previous week and up by one from a year ago when the state’s count was 10.
The rig count in the Permian, the most active basin in the country, was unchanged from the previous week at 241 and down by 60 from 301 a year ago.
