The Number of Oil and Gas Rigs in the World in August Fell for the First Time in 3 Months
In August 2023, the number of active oil and gas rigs worldwide fell in August for the first time in three months, according to US oilfield services company Baker Hughes.
On average, last month there were 1,788 installations in the world compared to 1,820 in July. At the same time, the August level is 37% lower than the indicator for the same month in 2022.
In the US, installs last month were down 26 from July to 647 (the lowest since February 2022). In Canada, the figure rose by 3 to 189. Thus, North America accounted for 46.8% of the world’s drilling rigs compared to 47.2% in July and 52.9% a year earlier.
The number of installations in Europe for the month decreased by 3 (to 121), in Latin America the indicator decreased by 4 (to 173), in the Asia-Pacific region – by 4 (to 220), in the Middle East – by 5 (to 329). At the same time, in Africa, the number of drilling rigs increased by 7 and reached 109, which is the highest figure since February 2020.
Baker Hughes has been publishing data on active drilling rigs since 1944. At first, the company collected information only in the US and Canada, since 1975 – all over the world. Since June 2019, it has included the number of drilling rigs in Ukraine in its calculations, while the recalculation of consolidated data for Europe for previous periods has not been carried out in this regard.
The historical maximum in terms of the number of operating drilling rigs was noted in 1981 – 5624 installations. The minimum number was recorded in 2020 and amounted to 1352 installations.
