New figures show the amount of rigs in the US had increased by 45% to 1,030 in December compared to the same month a year earlier.
Statistics from S&P Platts Analytics compare how many rigs both onshore and offshore were drilling between December and November in 2017 with the same period in 2016.
In both data sets, the number of rigs decreased between the last two months of the year but steadily grew over the next 12 months.
S&P Global Platts Senior Industry Analyst Trey Cowan said: “The appetite for shallow conventional wells waned during December and accounted for nearly the entire pullback in drilling activity during the month.
“But the fact that horizontal drilling continued at a stable pace over the holidays suggests that underlying prices of oil and gas are at levels that will likely cause the overall U.S. rig count to climb during 2018.”