New York (Platts)--15Jan2010/1205 pm EST/1705 GMT

The number of US oil and natural gas wells and dry holes completed in 2009 declined by 37% from completions in 2008, the American Petroleum Institute has estimated.

API said in a statement on Thursday that the 2009 total was 39,068 completions, but that the fourth-quarter total of 10,609 completions was 19% higher than the third quarter, which in turn had been up 6% from the second quarter.

"We are certainly seeing US drilling activity picking up with the economic recovery, but there is still a long way to go before activity begins to near the pace of 2008, which was helped by strong commodity prices," Hazem Arafa, the director of API's statistics department, said in the statement. API also said that, for the year, the estimated number of exploratory oil and gas wells fell by half, to 1,887 wells, while the number of full-year development oil and gas wells dove 38% to 32,490 wells.

For the latest quarter, exploratory oil and gas wells fell by 58% from the same quarter of 2008, to 411 wells, while the number of fourth-quarter development oil and gas wells dropped 35%, to 8,911 wells, compared with the fourth-quarter of 2008," the API report found.

Natural gas was the primary target for domestic drilling in 2009, API noted, with an estimated 18,269 natural gas wells completed. "The gap between the number of oil wells and gas wells completed narrowed somewhat. While the number of gas well completions dove 42 percent from 2008 to 2009, the number of oil well completions fell 35 percent for the year, to 16,108 wells, compared with 24,646 well completions in 2008," the report said.

API also estimated the total footage of 234,982,000 feet drilled for 2009, a 44% decline from 2008. For the fourth quarter, estimated footage drilled stood at 57,566 feet, 51% lower than the fourth quarter of 2008, according to API.

--Robert DiNardo, robert_dinardo@platts.com