Bakken Rig Count at 69

Bakken Rig Count Remains Steady
akken Rigs

The Bakken-Three Forks rig count dropped to 69 rigs running across our coverage area by end of the week on Friday.

In recent Bakken news, North Dakota senator, Heidi Heitkamp, pushes back against the latest federal mandate to reduce methane emissions.

Read more:Heitkamp Reacts to Methane Ruling

The U.S. rig count fell by 16 this week, ending with 848 rigs running by midday Friday.  A total of 196 rigs were targeting natural gas (down six from previous week) and 652 were targeting oil in the U.S. (10 less than the previous week). The remainder were drilling service wells (e.g. disposal wells, injection wells, etc.)70 are in ND alone.

Bakken Oil & Gas Rigs

The Bakken oil rigs were at 69 this week with Bloomberg reporting WTI oil prices trading at $45.19/bbl on Friday afternoon, a $1.59 decrease from the previous week. WTI-Brent decreased $.1.69 landing to $48.66. The Bakken has zero natural active gas rig in the area this week with futures increasing slightly to $2.70/mmbtu by midday.

McKenzie County continues to lead development at 22 rigs this week, while Williams (14), Dunn (13) and Mountrail (13) followed behind. View the full list below under the Bakken Drilling by County section.

Activity continues to be dominated by horizontal drilling:

  • 66 rigs are drilling horizontal wells
  • 0 rigs are drilling directional wells
  • 3 rigs are drilling vertical wells

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Bakken Drilling by County

Bakken Oil & Gas News

Shale Industry Loses Billions

Heitkamp Reacts to Methane Ruling

What is the Rig Count?

The Bakken Shale Rig Count is an index of the total number of oil & gas drilling rigs running across Montana and North Dakota. The rigs referred to in this article are for ALL drilling reported by Baker Hughes and not solely wells targeting the Bakken formation. All land rigs and onshore rig data shown here are based upon industry estimates provided by the Baker Hughes Rig Count.

Read more at bakerhughes.com