Baker Hughes reported on Friday that the number of oil and gas rigs in the US fell again this week, by 2, to 251, marking the twentieth straight loss in the number of active rigs.
The total oil and gas rigs are now sitting at 695 fewer than this time last year.
The number of oil rigs increased for the week by 1 rig, according to Baker Hughes data, bringing the total to 181-compared to 776 active rigs this time last year.
The total number of active gas rigs in the United States fell this week by 3 rigs, landing at 68 total rigs. This compares to 169 rigs a year ago.
To compare active rigs with supply figures, the EIA's estimate for oil production in the United States rose for week ending July 17-the last week for which there is data, to 11.1 million barrels of oil per day. While this represents a 100,000-bpd increase from the week prior, oil production in the United States is still 2 million bpd less than the all-time high for US production.
Canada's overall rig count rose this week by 10, settling at 42 active rigs. Oil and gas rigs in Canada are now down 85 year on year.
Oil prices were trading down on the day in Tuesday morning, still under pressure from reports earlier in the week that showed an unexpected increase in U.S. crude oil inventories. At 12:33pm EDT, WTI was trading down 0.85% at $40.72-essentially flat on the week. Brent was trading down $0.48 at $42.86 nearly $0.40 less than this time last week and a loss of 1.11% on the day.
At 1:07pm, WTI was trading at $40.87 per barrel, with Brent changing hands at $42.98 per barrel.
By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com
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Julianne Geiger is a veteran editor, writer and researcher for Oilprice.com, and a member of the Creative Professionals Networking Group. More