The number of active oil and gas rigs in the United States increased by eleven sites this past week, which marked the eleventh straight week of no-decline in the oil rig count, according to Baker Hughes latest report.
Seven of the reactivated rigs counted towards the oil count, and the four others counted towards the gas count.
Last week, the oil rig count stood at its highest in seven months, even as the count had increased by just a single rig to 407.
The domestic oil rig count now stands at 414; this time last year, 652 oil rigs were active. The depleted gas count tells the same story; currently 92 gas rigs are in production, which is less than half of the amount of gas rigs active at the same time last year.
State-wise, Louisiana gained eight rigs and Texas restarted production at four sites. Utah, West Virginia and Ohio each gained one or two rigs each. Oklahoma lost four rigs and New Mexico lost two.
The Permian Basin, the largest basin by rig count, lost two rigs, while Eagle Ford's count remained stagnant. The Utica and Marcellus formations increased by one or two rigs each.
Canada saw a three-rig decline in Friday's report, after seeing a 25-rig jump two weeks ago.
Brent barrel prices stood at $48.26 at the time of the report's writing, and West Texas Intermediate traded at $46.10-a fall from Thursday's price spike after EIA inventory data revealed what was the largest crude inventory draw this century. After yesterday's release of the EIA report, West Texas Intermediate traded at $47.31 a barrel while Brent traded at $49.81.
Zainab Calcuttawala for Oilprice.com
More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Zainab Calcuttawala is an American journalist based in Morocco. She completed her undergraduate coursework at the University of Texas at Austin (Hook’em) and reports on… More
Comments
In the case of DUCS, (drilled but uncompleted), the drilling rig drills the well, moves off but the frac units are not brought out to do the "completion", which consists of fracking the well with the frac units. They are delayed until later for economic reasons.
Hope that helps. Keep up the good work. If you ever stood at a frac job and witnessed ten 2500 horsepower frac units wound out at maximum pump rate, you'd get a real good understanding of all this.
Joe