Bakken Shale Region Maintaining 33 Rigs

The Bakken-Three Forks rig count continued to fall this week with Baker Hughes reporting 33 rigs running across our coverage area by midday Wednesday..

In recent Bakken news, North Dakota's Department of Mineral Resources announced that the state's crude-oil production dropped in September to the lowest level in more than two years.

Read more: Helms predicts oil to go lower for longer

A total of 592 oil and gas rigs were running across the United States this week, a gain of five over last week. 118 rigs targeted natural gas (two more than the previous week) and 474 were targeting oil in the U.S. (three more than the previous week). The remainder were drilling service wells (e.g. disposal wells, injection wells, etc.) 33 of the rigs active in the U.S. were running in North Dakota.

Bakken Oil & Gas Rigs

Bakken oil rigs were at 33 this week with Bloomberg reporting WTI oil prices increased $1.74 to $47.43 on Wednesday afternoon. Prices for WTI-Brent also rose to a per barrel price of $48.42. The Bakken has zero natural active gas rig in the area this week with futures trading at $3.04/mmbtu by midday.

McKenzie County leads production in the region but dropped one to 13 rigs running this week. View the full list below under the Bakken Drilling by County section.

Activity continues to be dominated by horizontal drilling:

  • 33 rigs are drilling horizontal wells
  • 0 rigs are drilling directional wells
  • 0 rigs are drilling vertical wells

Bakken Drilling by County

 

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.

Be sure to visit our Bakken Job Listings to search openings and come back weekly for updates or sign up for alerts - Daily or Weekly Email Alerts

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