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North America Adds Rigs Week on Week

North America added eight rigs week on week, according to Baker Hughes’ latest North America rotary rig count, which was published on December 5. The total U.S. rig count increased by five week on week and the total Canada rig count rose by three during the same period, taking the total North America rig count […]

North America added eight rigs week on week, according to Baker Hughes’ latest North America rotary rig count, which was published on December 5.

The total U.S. rig count increased by five week on week and the total Canada rig count rose by three during the same period, taking the total North America rig count up to 740, comprising 549 rigs from the U.S. and 191 rigs from Canada, the count outlined.

Of the total U.S. rig count of 549, 527 rigs are categorized as land rigs, 19 are categorized as offshore rigs, and three are categorized as inland water rigs. The total U.S. rig count is made up of 413 oil rigs, 129 gas rigs, and seven miscellaneous rigs, according to Baker Hughes’ count, which revealed that the U.S. total comprises 476 horizontal rigs, 58 directional rigs, and 15 vertical rigs.

Week on week, the U.S. land rig count rose by three, and its offshore and inland water rig counts each increased by one, Baker Hughes highlighted. The U.S. oil rig count rose by six week on week, its gas rig count dropped by one by week on week, and its miscellaneous rig count remained unchanged week on week, the count showed. The U.S. horizontal rig count rose by one, its directional rig count remained unchanged, and its vertical rig count increased by four, week on week, the count revealed.

A major state variances subcategory included in the rig count showed that, week on week, Louisiana added four rigs and New Mexico added one rig. A major basin variances subcategory included in Baker Hughes’ rig count showed that, week on week, the Eagle Ford basin dropped one rig.

Canada’s total rig count of 191 is made up of 126 oil rigs and 65 gas rigs, Baker Hughes pointed out. Week on week, the country’s oil rig count rose by five, its gas rig count dropped by two, and its miscellaneous rig count remained unchanged, the count revealed.

The total North America rig count is down 43 rigs compared to year ago levels, according to Baker Hughes’ count, which showed that the U.S. has cut 40 rigs and Canada has cut three rigs, year on year. The U.S. has dropped 69 oil rigs and added 27 gas rigs and two miscellaneous rigs, while Canada has dropped five gas rigs and added two oil rigs, year on year, the count outlined.

In its previous rig count, which was released on November 26, Baker Hughes revealed that North America dropped 17 rigs week on week. The total U.S. rig count dropped by 10 week on week and the total Canada rig decreased by seven during the same period, that count showed.

Baker Hughes’ November 21 rig count showed that North America added 12 rigs week on week, its November 14 rig count showed that North America dropped two rigs week on week, its November 7 rig count revealed that North America added six rigs week on week, and its October 31 count showed that North America dropped 16 rigs week on week.

According to monthly rig count summary figures in Baker Hughes’ latest count, the North America rig count stood at 740 in December, 739 in November, 741 in October, 728 in September, 717 in August, 707 in July, 687 in June, 690 in May, 725 in April, 786 in March, 836 in February, and 791 in January.

Archived Baker Hughes data, which Rigzone was directed to by the Baker Hughes team, outlined that the North America rig count stood at 751 in December 2024, 789 in November 2024, 804 in October, September and August 2024, 779 in July 2024, 750 in June 2024, 722 in May 2024, 748 in April 2024, 822 in March 2024, 855 in February 2024, and 818 in January 2024.

This data outlined that, in 2023, the North America rig count stood at 784 in December, 816 in November, 814 in October, 819 in September, 836 in August, 858 in July, 832 in June, 817 in May, 861 in April, 948 in March, 1,006 in February, and 998 in January. 

Going further back, this data outlined that, in 2020, the North America rig count stood at 432 in December, 405 in November, 361 in October, 316 in September, 303 in August, 288 in July, 292 in June, 371 in May, 598 in April, 904 in March, 1,039 in February, and 996 in January. 

Baker Hughes states on its site that it has issued rig counts as a service to the petroleum industry since 1944, when Baker Hughes Tool Company began weekly counts of U.S. and Canadian drilling activity. On its site, the company describes the figures as “an important business barometer for the drilling industry and its suppliers”. The company notes on its site that working rig location information is provided in part by Enverus.

To contact the author, email [email protected]

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North America Adds Rigs Week on Week

North America added eight rigs week on week, according to Baker Hughes’ latest North America rotary rig count, which was published on December 5. The total U.S. rig count increased by five week on week and the total Canada rig count rose by three during the same period, taking the total North America rig count up to 740, comprising 549 rigs from the U.S. and 191 rigs from Canada, the count outlined. Of the total U.S. rig count of 549, 527 rigs are categorized as land rigs, 19 are categorized as offshore rigs, and three are categorized as inland water rigs. The total U.S. rig count is made up of 413 oil rigs, 129 gas rigs, and seven miscellaneous rigs, according to Baker Hughes’ count, which revealed that the U.S. total comprises 476 horizontal rigs, 58 directional rigs, and 15 vertical rigs. Week on week, the U.S. land rig count rose by three, and its offshore and inland water rig counts each increased by one, Baker Hughes highlighted. The U.S. oil rig count rose by six week on week, its gas rig count dropped by one by week on week, and its miscellaneous rig count remained unchanged week on week, the count showed. The U.S. horizontal rig count rose by one, its directional rig count remained unchanged, and its vertical rig count increased by four, week on week, the count revealed. A major state variances subcategory included in the rig count showed that, week on week, Louisiana added four rigs and New Mexico added one rig. A major basin variances subcategory included in Baker Hughes’ rig count showed that, week on week, the Eagle Ford basin dropped one rig. Canada’s total rig count of 191 is made up of 126 oil rigs and 65 gas rigs, Baker Hughes pointed out.

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The Future of Hyperscale: Neoverse Joins NVLink Fusion as SC25 Accelerates Rack-Scale AI Architectures

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Microsoft will invest $80B in AI data centers in fiscal 2025

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John Deere unveils more autonomous farm machines to address skill labor shortage

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2025 playbook for enterprise AI success, from agents to evals

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More 2025 is poised to be a pivotal year for enterprise AI. The past year has seen rapid innovation, and this year will see the same. This has made it more critical than ever to revisit your AI strategy to stay competitive and create value for your customers. From scaling AI agents to optimizing costs, here are the five critical areas enterprises should prioritize for their AI strategy this year. 1. Agents: the next generation of automation AI agents are no longer theoretical. In 2025, they’re indispensable tools for enterprises looking to streamline operations and enhance customer interactions. Unlike traditional software, agents powered by large language models (LLMs) can make nuanced decisions, navigate complex multi-step tasks, and integrate seamlessly with tools and APIs. At the start of 2024, agents were not ready for prime time, making frustrating mistakes like hallucinating URLs. They started getting better as frontier large language models themselves improved. “Let me put it this way,” said Sam Witteveen, cofounder of Red Dragon, a company that develops agents for companies, and that recently reviewed the 48 agents it built last year. “Interestingly, the ones that we built at the start of the year, a lot of those worked way better at the end of the year just because the models got better.” Witteveen shared this in the video podcast we filmed to discuss these five big trends in detail. Models are getting better and hallucinating less, and they’re also being trained to do agentic tasks. Another feature that the model providers are researching is a way to use the LLM as a judge, and as models get cheaper (something we’ll cover below), companies can use three or more models to

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OpenAI’s red teaming innovations define new essentials for security leaders in the AI era

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More OpenAI has taken a more aggressive approach to red teaming than its AI competitors, demonstrating its security teams’ advanced capabilities in two areas: multi-step reinforcement and external red teaming. OpenAI recently released two papers that set a new competitive standard for improving the quality, reliability and safety of AI models in these two techniques and more. The first paper, “OpenAI’s Approach to External Red Teaming for AI Models and Systems,” reports that specialized teams outside the company have proven effective in uncovering vulnerabilities that might otherwise have made it into a released model because in-house testing techniques may have missed them. In the second paper, “Diverse and Effective Red Teaming with Auto-Generated Rewards and Multi-Step Reinforcement Learning,” OpenAI introduces an automated framework that relies on iterative reinforcement learning to generate a broad spectrum of novel, wide-ranging attacks. Going all-in on red teaming pays practical, competitive dividends It’s encouraging to see competitive intensity in red teaming growing among AI companies. When Anthropic released its AI red team guidelines in June of last year, it joined AI providers including Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, and even the U.S.’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which all had released red teaming frameworks. Investing heavily in red teaming yields tangible benefits for security leaders in any organization. OpenAI’s paper on external red teaming provides a detailed analysis of how the company strives to create specialized external teams that include cybersecurity and subject matter experts. The goal is to see if knowledgeable external teams can defeat models’ security perimeters and find gaps in their security, biases and controls that prompt-based testing couldn’t find. What makes OpenAI’s recent papers noteworthy is how well they define using human-in-the-middle

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