OpeOluwani Akintayo
Lagos — Total US active drilling rigs increased by 6 to 610 rigs in the week ended 28 January, data obtained from OPEC’s February’s Monthly Oil Market Report, MPMR has said.
The increase is 225 rigs more than a year ago.
This means the number of active offshore rigs was steady week-on-week at 18, two rigs higher
than in 2021.
Moreover, 590 rigs (oil and gas) were active onshore, climbing by 6 week-on-week, and two in inland waters.
The US horizontal rig count rose by 9 rigs week-on-week to 553 rigs, compared to 344 horizontal rigs a year ago.
The number of drilling rigs for oil increased by 4 to 495, while gas rigs climbed by 2 to 115 week-on-week.
Overall, in all the main basins, except for the Ardmore Wood Ford, which dropped by one rig on the weekly rig count, the number of rigs did not drop.
While the rig count in the Permian increased by one week-on-week to 293 rigs, the number of active rigs remains unchanged at 27 in the Williston, 43 in the Eagle Ford, 26 in Cana Woodford and 12 rigs in the DJ-Niobrara basins.
Two rigs also mounted in the Barnett basin after seven weeks of no activity.
Drilling and completion (D&C) activities for spudded, completed and started wells in all US shale plays based on EIA DPR regions saw 588 horizontal wells spudded in January (as per preliminary data), down by 149 m-o-m, but 9% higher than in January 2021.
In January 2022, preliminary data indicated a lower number of completed wells at 593, but a marginally higher number of started wells at 686.
However, the number of completed and started wells increased by 17% and 42% y-o-y, respectively.
Regarding identified US oil and gas fracking operations by region, Rystad Energy reported that
after the highest value of 1,087 fracked wells seen in October 2021 since March 2020, 526 wells started to frack in January. This preliminary number is based almost exclusively on analysis of high-frequency satellite data.
Preliminary data on fracking in January shows that 74 and 190 wells were fracked in the Permian Midland Tight and Permian Delaware Tight, respectively.
In comparison with December 2021, there was a decrease of 88 wells fracked in the Midland and an increase of 17 wells fracked in the Delaware tight.
Data also indicated that 30 wells were fracked in the DJ Basin compared with 64 in the Eagle Ford and only 1 in the Bakken in North Dakota.
