Midland County replaced Lea County, N.M., as Permian Basin’s No. 2 county in the April 24 rig count from Baker Hughes. Midland’s count was unchanged from the previous week with 31 rigs while Lea idled 9 rigs to fall to 29. Eddy County, N.M., remains the leader with 41 rigs. Other basin rig counts include Martin (24), Howard (18), Loving (18), Reeves (17), Upton (13), Ward (11) and Pecos (10).
Permian, Texas and New Mexico each idled rigs for the sixth straight week, and the U.S. count declined for the seventh straight week. Permian has 246 rigs (283 previous week, 460 previous year), Texas has 231 rigs (262 previous week, 491 previous year) and New Mexico has 70 rigs (84 previous week, 104 previous year). The U.S. count declined by 64 rigs to 465 (after falling by 73 rigs the previous week from 602) – down 137 rigs (22.8 percent) in past two weeks. A year ago there were 991 rigs in U.S.
U.S. Energy Information Administration believes U.S. will once again be a net importer of oil by 2020Q3 as activity falls, storage capacity declines and companies shut in production. Jason Bordoff of Columbia University told Wall Street Journal last week, “Incredibly low prices that will continue for some time reflect the fact that supply needs to come off the market at an unprecedented rate and volume.”
Oklahoma now ranks sixth among states in Baker Hughes’ count with 20 rigs. Others include Louisiana (40 rigs), North Dakota (27) and Pennsylvania (25). Rig counts in other regions include Eagle Ford (35), Haynesville (34), Marcellus (32) and Williston (27).