Despite posting a loss for the second quarter, Pioneer Natural Resources said it would increase its capital budget for the second half and add more rigs.

Pioneer said it lost $218 million in the second quarter, joining its peers struggling to generate revenue during the downturn in the crude oil market. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Scott Sheffield said in a statement the company was seeing benefits from operations focused largely in the Spraberry/Wolfcamp shale basin in Texas.

"As a result, we are putting rigs back to work and plan to return to an activity level during 2016 that can result in a similar growth trajectory that we were delivering in the second half of 2014 before the downturn," he said in a statement.

After unloading stakes in the Eagle Ford shale in Texas, Pioneer Natural Resources said it plans to boost drilling in the emerging area in the west of the state.

Pioneer and its partners at Reliance Holding last month sold pipeline operations in the Eagle Ford shale basin in Texas to a subsidiary of Enterprise Products Partners for $2.15 billion. The company said it would use the revenue to focus its efforts on the oil-rich Spraberry/Woflcamp asset within the Permian basin in western Texas.

The company says it plans to add two rigs per month to the asset during the second half of the year. Pioneer said it estimated the basin holds at least 10 billion barrels of oil equivalent of net recovery resources.

The capital budget for the second half of the year is up 18 percent to $2.2 billion. The budget includes $1.94 billion for drilling and $250 million for development of Spraberry/Wolfcamp.