Baker Hughes Oil Rig Count

The Baker Hughes Oil Rig Count is the United States oil subset of the Baker Hughes North American Rotary Rig Count.

Baker Hughes Company publishes it as a service to the petroleum industry since 1944, when Hughes Tool Company began weekly counts. A monthly international count followed in 1975.

The census covers every rotary rig working in oil or gas on land and offshore, with no sample. Field representatives contact every operating rig in the district, whatever drill bit it uses. It does not measure output, jobs or prices, and it leaves out idle, cable-tool and non-rotary rigs. The oil label reflects the operator's choice at permit time, not measured output.

A rig counts as active only when it is on location and drilling for 4 of 7 days, from spud to target depth (TD).

United States counts are released weekly at 12:00 Central time on Friday, or the prior working day on holidays. International and worldwide counts are released monthly on the last working day of the first week at 5:00 a.m. Central time.

Each release brings state, basin, trajectory and Gulf of Mexico files with Canada totals, and part of the location data comes from Enverus.

A free email alert replaced the monthly press release after August 2020. The latest weekly file stands with no stated revisions, and readings use the level with weekly and yearly change. It serves as a business barometer and a leading indicator of demand for drilling services. There is no buying or selling threshold.

The total is an unweighted sum, so each rig counts as 1 and parts move the headline directly.

• Oil rigs: rigs the operator classed for oil when the permit was issued; this page's headline series.
• Natural-gas rigs: rigs classed for gas at permit time.
• Miscellaneous rigs: rigs drilling for neither oil nor gas; they complete the total.
• Location split: land, offshore and inland-waters sites.
• Trajectory split: vertical, directional and horizontal paths; horizontal tilts past 80 degrees.
• Geography splits: state, basin such as the Permian, Gulf of Mexico and county or well detail.

The week ended 14 August 2020 set an all-time low of 244 United States rigs, down 3 on the week. Oil rigs fell 4 to 172, their lowest since July 2005. Gas rigs rose 1 to 70, with 2 miscellaneous rigs.

More than half of United States oil rigs were in the Permian basin, which fell 5 to a record low of 117. The drop came in a demand shock linked to COVID-19, with the total down 691 rigs or 74% from a year earlier. The August 2020 United States average was 250.

1. Contact: Each field representative contacts every operating rig in the district, regardless of drill-bit brand.
2. Active test: The rig must sit on location and drill for 4 of 7 days, from spud to target depth (TD). Rigs in transit, rigging up, workovers, completions or production testing count as 0.
3. Classification: Each active rig is labelled oil, gas or miscellaneous by the operator's choice at permit time. A well yielding 50% gas, 20% NGLs and 30% oil may still be listed as gas or oil.
4. Aggregation: The United States oil count sums active oil rigs across districts, each worth 1, with no weighting or seasonal adjustment. For example, 200 plus 150 plus 127 gives 477 oil rigs, and 477 plus 103 plus 6 gives 586 in total.
5. Publication: Counts appear as levels with changes from the prior week and year, with no stated revisions.