Total active U.S. natural gas rigs decreased by one to 119 for the week ended Friday (Jan. 26), while an uptick in Permian Basin activity helped lift the combined domestic tally one rig overall to 621, according to the latest count from Baker Hughes Co. (BKR).
U.S. oil-directed rigs increased by two for the period to reach 499. Two rigs were added on land domestically, while the Gulf of Mexico dropped one rig to fall to 17, up from 13 a year ago. Gains in the United States included one directional rig and one vertical rig, partly offset by a decline of one horizontal rig, BKR data show.
The 119 active U.S. natural gas rigs as of Friday compares with 160 rigs running in the year-earlier period. At 621, the combined U.S. rig count is down 150 from a year ago, according to the BKR numbers, which are based partly on data from Enverus.
Canada’s rig count climbed seven units to 230, versus 247 in the year-ago period. Gains there included four oil-directed rigs and three natural gas-directed rigs.
Counting by major basin, the Permian added three rigs, raising its total to 310, down from 357 in the year-earlier period. Elsewhere among plays, the Cana Woodford and Denver Julesburg-Niobrara each added one rig, while one rig exited in the Eagle Ford Shale.
In the state-by-state count, BKR recorded net increases of one rig each for New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. On the other side of the ledger, Louisiana, North Dakota and Texas each dropped one rig, according to BKR.
The recent Arctic cold snap that swept across the Lower 48, causing freeze-offs, illustrated some of the challenges upstream operators are facing in North Dakota’s Bakken Shale.
Frigid temperatures earlier this month shut in as much as 700,000 b/d of oil and 2 Bcf/d of natural gas, state regulators said.
A primary cause for production shut-ins during extreme cold is that gas gathering and processing systems fill with liquids, and “basically the compressor systems and the pipelines drown, and so wells get shut-in in order to avoid flaring,” North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources’ Lynn Helms, Oil and Gas Division director, said recently.
“Once the wells get shut-in or curtailed, then it becomes really, really difficult to bring them back on production” in the bone-chilling cold.
As a result, “It will be a long, slow recovery,” Helms said. “A lot of times these things take a month from the time that it hits until we see back to normal production…January’s going to be a very, very bad month in terms of production numbers.”
