Baker Hughes reported a decrease to the number of active oil and gas rigs in the United States on Friday. Oil and gas rigs decreased by 4 rigs, according to the report, with the number of active oil rigs decreasing by 2 to 859 this week, while the number of gas rigs dipped by 3, hitting 183. There was one miscellaneous rig addition for the week as well.
The oil and gas rig count now stands at 1,044-up 90 from this time last year.
Canada's oil and gas rigs for the week held steady, at 223 rigs, which is 6 more than this time last year, with a 2-rig loss for oil and a 2-rig gain for gas.
Cana Woodford lost 3 rigs this week-the biggest of the losers. Marcellus lost 2 rigs, and Williston added one. Granite Wash (+2) and the Mississippian (+1) both gained rigs, while the Permian, which saw over a hundred rigs added over the last year, held steady this week at 480 rigs.
Oil prices were fairly stable on Friday morning as Iran/US tensions continued to play out in part over Twitter, and an S&P Global Platts survey that showed that OPEC had increased oil production in July by 340,000 bpd.
WTI was trading down at 10:40am EDT $0.19 (-0.28%) at $68.77, with Brent crude trading up $.04 (+0.05%) at $73.49. For WTI, that's almost flat week on week. For Brent, it's almost a dollar per barrel loss.
EIA estimates for US production were down for the week ending July 27, at 10.9 million bpd.
By 1:10pm EDT, WTI and Brent were trading down-widening the WTI discount to Brent. WTI was trading down 0.87% (-$0.60) at $68.36. Brent crude was trading down 0.34% (-$0.25) at $73.20 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