In contrast to percussion drilling, which consists of continuously dropping a heavy weight in the wellbore to chip away at the rock, rotary drilling uses a rotating drill bit to grind, cut ...

The Baker Hughes' U.S. rotary drilling rig count was 589 on Jan. 3, unchanged from the previous week, down by 32 from 621 a year ago and unchanged from two weeks ago. Over the last eight weeks the rig ...