US Rig Count Slips 3 to 601; Canada Adds 10 Rigs

The US rotary rig count fell by 3 this week to 601, according to Baker Hughes' weekly survey, while Canada added 10 rigs to reach 233.

Canada's double-digit build against a US decline is the sharpest divergence in the data. But one week is noise. The directional story sits in the basins, and there the picture is narrow: one basin gained, two lost, and eleven held flat.

Which basins moved?

The Permian, the country's most active play, posted the only major-basin increase, adding 2 rigs to reach 275. That keeps West Texas and New Mexico home to nearly half of all US land drilling.

Two regions lost rigs:

• The Haynesville (a gas shale play straddling Louisiana and Texas) dropped 3 rigs to 53 — the week's largest single-basin decline.
• The Ardmore Woodford in southern Oklahoma fell 1 rig to just 1.

Every other tracked basin posted no net change. The Eagle Ford held at 50, the Williston at 35, the Granite Wash at 23, the Marcellus at 23, the Cana Woodford at 18, the Utica at 10, and the DJ-Niobrara at 9. The Barnett sat at 2. The Arkoma Woodford and the Mississippian remained at zero.

What does the flat map tell us?

Eleven basins at zero net change is not a drilling boom. It is a fleet parked in place, and the numbers say operators are not adding capacity anywhere except the Permian.

The concentration bears repeating. Of 601 US rigs, 275 — roughly 46 percent — work the Permian. The next-largest basin, Haynesville, runs fewer than a fifth of that. Capital keeps flowing to the basin with the best per-well economics, and everywhere else is holding steady or draining slowly.

The Ardmore Woodford at a single rig is the starkest data point. That is functionally an exit, not a slowdown.

What is the caveat here?

Weekly rig counts are a blunt instrument. Baker Hughes counts rigs active during the survey week, not footage drilled, wells completed, or oil and gas produced. A rig that lays down Friday and returns Monday reads as a decline; efficiency gains mean flat counts can still mean growing output.

The source data also omits the oil-versus-gas split, so we cannot say whether the Haynesville drop reflects gas-price weakness or a single contractor's crew schedule. Three rigs is within normal week-to-week churn for a basin that size.

The watch item

Watch whether the Permian's 2-rig gain holds next week or reverses — and whether Haynesville's slide continues past the 50-rig mark, a level that would signal a real gas-directed pullback rather than weekly noise.