Houston, Texas – Oilfield services company Baker Hughes Inc. (NYSE:BHI) announced that the number of rigs exploring for or developing oil and natural gases in the US declined this week to 877. This is a decrease of 8 rigs when compared to last week, with oil rigs up 1 to 675 rigs, gas rigs down 9 to 202 rigs, and miscellaneous rigs unchanged at 0 rigs.
Houston-based Baker Hughes said on Friday that 675 rigs were searching for oil and 202 explored for natural gases. A year ago, with oil prices almost double from prices now, 1,914 rigs were active.
However, among major oil and gas producing states, Texas gained three rigs. Louisiana lost six, New Mexico was down by two and Colorado, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania decreased by one. Alaska, Arkansas, California, Kansas, North Dakota, Ohio, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming were all unchanged.
The US rig count peaked in 1981 at 4,530 and reached its lowest number in 1999 with 488 rigs.
About the Rig Count
The rotary rig technique rotates the drill pipe from the surface and it can either drill a new well or sidetrack an existing one. They are mainly used to explore, develop and/or produce oil and natural gases,
Baker Hughes Inc has issued the rotary counts since 1944, as a service to the petroleum industry. It began when Hughes Tool Company made weekly counts of US and Canadian drilling activity. In 1975, Hughes initiated a monthly international rig count. However, the Baker Hughes International Rotary Rig Count does not include rigs in Russia or onshore China.
The North American rig count is released weekly at noon, central time, on the last day of the work week. The international rig count is released on the fifth working day of each month.
In this video it can be seen last month rig count report from the big oil company Baker Hughes, when alredy 5 rigs more were deployed across the United States in July than in June.
Source: Baker Hughes