The Bakken-Three Forks rig count continued to gain this week with Baker Hughes reporting 37 rigs running across our coverage area by midday Friday.
In recent Bakken news, Oasis Petroleum announced it has signed an agreement to purchase the drilling rights to approximately 55,000 net acres in the Williston Basin from SM Energy Company.
Read more: Oasis Purchases More Bakken Acreage
A total of 567 oil and gas rigs were running across the United States this week, a gain of 12 over last week. 117 rigs targeted natural gas (three more than the previous week) and 450 were targeting oil in the U.S. (nine more than the previous week). The remainder were drilling service wells (e.g. disposal wells, injection wells, etc.) 37 of the rigs active in the U.S. were running in North Dakota.
Bakken Oil & Gas Rigs
Bakken oil rigs were at 37 this week with Bloomberg reporting WTI oil prices dropping $4.57 to $44.13 on Friday afternoon. WTI-Brent also fell, with Bloomberg reporting a per barrel price of $45.60. The Bakken has zero natural active gas rig in the area this week with futures trading at $2.78/mmbtu by midday.
McKenzie County leads production in the region with 14 rigs running this week. View the full list below under the Bakken Drilling by County section.
Activity continues to be dominated by horizontal drilling:
- 36 rigs are drilling horizontal wells
- 1 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.
