World Oil staff
OPEC+ supply increases in the second half of 2025 strongly impacted oil prices, continuing to build on earlier trends of decline, with WTI posting a 15.8% decrease to an average $65.39/bbl in 2025. Brent saw a similar decline of 15.2%, averaging out to $69.14/bbl in 2025. Consequently, drilling activity across the U.S. was lower in 2025, due to a number of factors, including the aforementioned oil prices, increased OPEC+ supply and continued fiscal discipline by operators.
Drilling activity in the U.S. continued to contract into 2025, with a more substantial drop in rig count compared to 2024’s losses. The U.S. rig count average dropped 6.4%, from a figure of 601 in 2024 to 563 in 2025. U.S. production, meanwhile, continued its steady march higher, with a 2.8% increase from 2024, averaging out to 13.59 MMbpd in 2025.
Activity in 2025 vs 2024. The count began 2025 at 582 and fluctuated within the 580–590 range for the first four months of the year, before beginning a sharper decline in May that culminated in a low point of 538 in August. That low count recovered slightly in the remaining months of 2025, hovering around the 540 range before finishing out the year at 546.
Among the four largest producing states, all of them saw reductions in rig counts, to varying degrees. Louisiana saw the most severe drop of 15.3% from 2024 to 2025, with the final 2025 average coming out to 34 units. Texas saw a loss of 10.3%, due mostly to activity drops in districts 1, 2, 7C and 8. North Dakota and New Mexico also saw less severe declines of -9.1% and -4.8%, respectively. But we cannot ignore Colorado, which suffered a 28.6% decline, some of it due to prices, and some of it due to state politics and regulations.
Looking more closely at the gas regions of the four major producers, Texas District 6 saw a slight two-unit gain, averaging out to 19 rigs for 2025. Louisiana’s Haynesville showed the opposite, dipping by two units to average 22 rigs for 2025. New Mexico’s Permian basin area similarly followed suit, with a drop of eight rigs to average 94 units for 2025. Finally, North Dakota saw a slight decline of three units, coming out to an average of 30 units for 2025.
Offshore. Activity offshore Louisiana showed a more substantial decrease, compared to last year, losing six units. Once again, this drop built on historical trends of decline, driven by low oil prices and substantial oil supply. Meanwhile, California showed no change, despite a historically poor regulatory climate for drilling activity, and Alaska actually gained two offshore units during 2025.
Natural gas in the Northeast. In the Marcellus-Utica plays, activity saw largely no change, compared to overall activity, despite a substantial decline in gas prices in the middle of 2025, though year-end prices heading into 2026 are promising. Pennsylvania registered the only loss of rigs, down 10.5% from 2024 to an average 17 rigs. Meanwhile, West Virigina and Ohio saw no change in the number of rigs operating within their borders, averaging out to eight and 11 rigs, respectively.
U.S. DUC count declines in oil regions. Reduced activity across a majority of the U.S. has resulted in declining DUC inventories over the course of 2025. According to the EIA, the total DUC count for December 2025 settled out at 5,020—a substantial 778-well reduction (-14.3%) from the final count of 5,798 for December 2024. The decrease was shared across all shale regions, with the Lower 48 region as the only exception with a 0.3% increase. Of the declining regions, the Permian showed the greatest change, down to 821 wells from 2024’s 1,280 (-43.6%). The Bakken and Eagle Ford regions also showed substantial reductions, with -24.8% and -19.3% declines, respectively. WO