Texas led a rebound in drilling rig counts in the past week, according to Baker Hughes. Texas added 5 rigs to reach a count of 364 to reverse a trend of declines in 4 of the past 5 weeks (239 year ago). Also as of Sept. 16, there were 343 rigs in Permian Basin (340 week ago, 259 year ago), 108 in New Mexico (109 week ago, 84 year ago) and 763 in U.S. (759 week ago, 512 year ago). Louisiana was the only other major producing state to add rigs last week.
Lea County, N.M., leads Permian with 65 (down 1 last week) followed by Eddy, N.M., with 40 (unchanged), Martin with 35 (up 3), Midland with 32 (down 1), Reeves with 30 (unchanged), Loving with 22 (up 1) and Howard with 21 (down 1).
Among states Louisiana is No. 3 with 65 rigs (up 1) followed by Oklahoma with 64 (unchanged) and North Dakota with 38 (down 1). Eagle Ford in south Texas is No. 2 among regions with 72 rigs (up 1) followed by Haynesville with 71 (unchanged), Williston with 40 (down 1) and Marcellus with 35 (unchanged).
Baker Hughes said the U.S. count averaged 764 in August – up 8 from 756 in July and up 263 from 501 in August 2021. Enverus said as of Sept. 14 ConocoPhillips was U.S. leader with 28 rigs followed by EOG (26), Pioneer (21), Devon (20), ExxonMobil (20) and Mewbourne (20). And 349 operators currently are operating rigs compared to 273 as of Sept. 14, 2021.