36 drilling rigs are working in North Dakota right now, filed under 20 operator names across 8 counties. The list comes off the North Dakota Industrial Commission's active rig report, so this is what the state has on the board, not a number somebody remembered from last month.
The work is concentrated where it always is. McKenzie (12), Williams (9), Divide (7). Between them those three counties hold most of the iron turning in the Williston Basin.
Rig count is the number that moves first. A rig turning means somebody already signed the contract and committed the money, and it means water, roustabouts, hot oil, vac trucks, sand and wireline all follow behind it within weeks. If you want to see where each one sits, the rig map plots them. If you want to know what the work pays once it shows up, the North Dakota pay index breaks it out by seat.
Who is actually running iron in the state today. Worth a look before you put an application in with somebody, because a company with no rigs turning is not adding crews.
The first column is the name the state prints, which is the entity that files the paperwork. That is often not who signs the checks anymore. The second column is who actually owns it.
| Filing Entity | Owned By | Rigs |
|---|---|---|
| Phoenix Operating LLC | — | 5 |
| Devon Energy Williston LLC | Devon Energy | 4 |
| Hess Bakken Investments II LLC | Chevron | 4 |
| Whiting Oil and Gas Corporation | Chord Energy | 3 |
| Burlington Resources Oil & Gas Company LP | ConocoPhillips | 3 |
| XTO Energy Inc | ExxonMobil | 2 |
| Koda Resources Operating LLC | — | 2 |
| Iron Oil Operating LLC | — | 1 |
| Hunt Oil Company | — | 1 |
| Berenergy Corporation | — | 1 |
| Zavanna Energy Operating LLC | — | 1 |
| Continental Resources Inc | — | 1 |
| Murex Petroleum Corporation | — | 1 |
| Enerplus Resources USA Corporation | Chord Energy | 1 |
| Petro-Hunt LLC | — | 1 |
| Silver Hill Energy Operating LLC | — | 1 |
| Formentera Operations LLC | — | 1 |
| Murfin Drilling Company Inc | — | 1 |
| True Oil LLC | — | 1 |
| Slawson Exploration Company Inc | — | 1 |
The same 36 rigs rolled up to the company that actually owns them. This is the picture the raw state list does not show you.
| Company | Rigs |
|---|---|
| Phoenix Operating LLC | 5 |
| Chevron | 4 |
| Chord Energy | 4 |
| Devon Energy | 4 |
| ConocoPhillips | 3 |
| ExxonMobil | 2 |
| Koda Resources Operating LLC | 2 |
| Berenergy Corporation | 1 |
| Continental Resources Inc | 1 |
| Formentera Operations LLC | 1 |
| Hunt Oil Company | 1 |
| Iron Oil Operating LLC | 1 |
| Murex Petroleum Corporation | 1 |
| Murfin Drilling Company Inc | 1 |
| Petro-Hunt LLC | 1 |
| Silver Hill Energy Operating LLC | 1 |
| Slawson Exploration Company Inc | 1 |
| True Oil LLC | 1 |
| Zavanna Energy Operating LLC | 1 |
Chord is the clearest example. It shows up on the state list twice, as Whiting and as Enerplus, because it absorbed both. Whiting merged with Oasis in July 2022 to create Chord, and Chord closed on Enerplus in May 2024. Counted separately it looks like two small operators. Counted properly it is 4 rigs and a tie for the busiest company in the state.
Chevron is here as Hess Bakken Investments, the affiliate Hess has always operated its North Dakota wells through. Chevron closed the $53 billion Hess acquisition in July 2025 and the entity name stayed. Burlington Resources has been a ConocoPhillips company since 2006, and XTO has been ExxonMobil since 2010.
Nine of the 36 rigs in this state are being run by a major. That is not what the operator list looks like at a glance.
Where the drilling is. This is the honest map of where a hand ought to be looking for a place to live.
| County | Rigs |
|---|---|
| McKenzie County | 12 |
| Williams County | 9 |
| Divide County | 7 |
| Mountrail County | 3 |
| Burke County | 2 |
| Renville County | 1 |
| Billings County | 1 |
| Dunn County | 1 |
We started logging the state's count every day on 2026-08-27. It builds from here, one row a day, and it stays free to read.
| Date | Rigs |
|---|---|
| 2026-08-29 | 36 |
| 2026-08-28 | 36 |
| 2026-08-27 | 34 |
For the longer arc: North Dakota was running 26 rigs in mid July and 36 by late August, 10 more than six weeks earlier. We covered that move here.
The North Dakota Industrial Commission publishes an active rig list showing every rig currently drilling in the state, with the operator, the rig, the well and the county. We read that list daily and store the count.
Three things worth knowing so you read it right. A rig that is rigging up or moving between locations may drop off the list for a day, which is why the number wobbles by 1 or 2 without anything real changing. A rig turning is not the same as a frac crew working, because drilling comes first and completions come weeks later. And the operator names are legal filing entities, not brands, which is why a company you have never heard of can turn out to be a major.