The Eagle Ford Shale drilling rig count grew by one to average 271 rigs over the past week. That equals the 2013 high from the first week in February.

Oil drilling levels hit a new record in the area with 241 rigs working. Expect activity to hold at this level and possibly go higher if oil prices stay above $100 per barrel.

The U.S. rig count is up 11 to 1,770, of which 845 are running in Texas. A total of 369 rigs are targeting natural gas and 1,395 are targeting oil in the U.S. The remainder are drilling service wells (e.g. disposal wells, injection wells, etc.).

We spent much of the week in Corpus Christi at the Texas Eagle Ford Oil & Gas EXPO. There will be another EXPO in April of 2014, so mark your calendars. We'll have more information for you soon.

The Dallas Fed noted difficulty in finding retail workers in the Eagle Ford region. There's a trickle down affect in a booming job market that makes almost all positions difficult to fill. You can read more from the Federal Reserve in the article Retail Workers Are Hard To Find In The Eagle Ford

*Note* Now quoting Baker Hughes. Baker Hughes also releases its own Eagle Ford Rig Count that covers the 14 core counties (~230 rigs). Our numbers cover a 30 county area impacted by Eagle Ford development. A full list of the counties included can be found in the table at the bottom of this article.

Eagle Ford Oil & Gas Rigs

[ic-l]The natural gas rig count in the region fell four rigs to 30 running. Natural gas futures were trading near $3.79/mmbtu on Friday afternoon. The commodity has held in the $3.60-3.80 range for a few weeks now.

Six more or 241 oil rigs are running in the region this week. That's a new Eagle Ford record and represents an increase of more than 200 oil rigs since the beginning of 2011.  WTI prices have held well above $100 per barrel over the past two weeks. The oil benchmark was trading over $108/bbl on Friday. Eagle Ford light crude traded at $104.50/bbl on July 18th.

A total of 218 rigs are drilling horizontal wells and just 13 rigs are drilling true vertical wells. McMullen & Karnes counties lead development with 35 and 32 rigs running, respectively. See the full list of drilling by county below.

South Texas Oil & Gas News:

• David Porter Will Speak At Shale EnviroSafe October 14-16 In San Antonio
• Retail Workers Hard To Find In The Eagle Ford
• The Corpus Christi Oil EXPO

Be sure to visit our South Texas Oilfield Job Listings to search openings and come back weekly for updates.

Eagle Ford Shale Drilling by County

agle Ford Operated Rig Count By Company

SmithBits no longer reports its operated rig count, but we'll have updated number for you from a new source soon. Until then, you can reference our numbers from mid-April. There has not been a significant change in the overall rig count since this date:

What is the Rig Count?

The Eagle Ford Shale Rig Count is an index of the total number of oil & gas drilling rigs running across a 30 county area in South Texas. The South Texas rigs referred to in this article are for ALL drilling reported by Baker Hughes and not solely wells targeting the Eagle Ford formation. All land rigs and onshore rig data shown here are based upon industry estimates provided by the Baker Hughes Rig Count and/or Smith Service Co's (Schlumberger) Smith Rig Count.