Oil may have bounced this week — last seen at $50.05 late on Friday — but the count of U.S. and North American drilling rigs is still declining. Baker Hughes Inc. (NYSE: BHI) has released its Weekly Rig Count report, and the numbers just are not very good at all:  down 21 to 1,048 rigs.

The breakdown in the number of oil rigs was down 12 to 813 rigs. The gas rigs were down by nine to 233, with miscellaneous rigs unchanged at two.

This is a trend that has continued to decline. Year-over-year is where the news gets real bad. Baker Hughes showed that the U.S. rig count is down a whopping 761 from last year’s count of 1,809. On a year-over-year basis, the oil rigs count was down by 674 and the gas rigs count was down 85, with miscellaneous rigs down two.

The U.S. Offshore rig count is down three from last week to 34. That is 16 fewer rigs than a year ago.

24/7 Wall St. has included a table of states below that is also from the Baker Hughes data. This shows the state-by-state drop over the past four weeks. North Dakota is now under 100 rigs for two weeks in a row. Texas fell off the cliff in the last month, dropping from 538 total rigs on March 6 down to 462 rigs on March 27. Louisiana was at 100 on March 6, but that is now down to 72 rigs.

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As Baker Hughes always says:

The Baker Hughes Rig Counts are an important business barometer for the drilling industry and its suppliers. When drilling rigs are active they consume products and services produced by the oil service industry. The active rig count acts as a leading indicator of demand for products used in drilling, completing, producing and processing hydrocarbons.

 

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