Rig count (Baker Hughes) in United States

It is the number of drilling rigs operating in the United States, split according to whether they are seeking oil or gas. It is published by Baker Hughes, an oilfield-services company rather than a statistical office; it has been the industry's benchmark for decades and is released free of charge.

A direct weekly count of active rigs drawn from the company's own field network. It is neither a survey nor an estimate: the rigs are counted, split between oil, gas and others.

It is the leading indicator of US crude supply. Drillers add or drop rigs according to what they expect from prices, so the count is read as their vote with their wallets: rising rigs point to more output in the months ahead, and falling rigs to less. It weighs on oil prices and on energy-linked currencies.

It counts rigs, not barrels: productivity per rig has risen so much with horizontal drilling that far fewer rigs are now needed to extract the same output, so the link between the count and production is no longer what it was fifteen years ago. It also covers only North America.