WASHINGTON – Oil well drilling trends continue to rise in the fourth quarter of 2012 with exploratory and development wells showing a 15 percent and 16 percent increase from 2011’s fourth quarter figures, respectively, according to API’s 2012 Quarterly Well Completion Report: Fourth Quarter.
“The oil and natural gas industry expanded oil drilling in 2012 thanks in large part to access on private and state lands,” said Hazem Arafa, director of API’s statistics department. “Additional access to our own vast energy resources and streamlined federal permitting would allow for more opportunities to produce U.S. energy while creating more American jobs and generating more revenue for our government.”
A year to date comparison of oil wells drilled yields an even larger increase: a 25 percent increase in total oil well completions from 2011 to 2012 (26,213 to 32,652 wells), according to the report.
The number of total gas wells completed continued to decline in both the fourth quarter of 2012 and in year to date comparisons, despite an uptick in exploratory gas drilling. In the year to date comparison, gas well completions have decreased 26 percent from 2011 (13,128 to 9,752 wells).