The the number of active oil and gas rigs fell for the second week in a row in the United States this week according to Baker Hughes, while actual US production was stagnate for the week.
The total number of active oil and gas drilling rigs fell by 10 rigs according to the report-like last week-with the number of active oil rigs falling by 8 to reach 816 and the number of gas rigs falling by 2 to 190.
The oil and gas rig count is now just 13 up from this time last year, with oil being seeing a 19-rig increase year on year, gas rigs seeing a 4-rig decrease, and miscellaneous rigs seeing a 2-rig decrease for the year.
Oil prices were trading up earlier on Friday leading up to the data release despite reports on Wednesday from the Energy Information Administration that showed a build in crude oil inventories.
WTI was trading up $0.75(+1.26%) at $60.05-above the psychologically important $60 per barrel. The Brent benchmark was trading up $0.44 (+0.66%) at $67.54 at 10:47am EST. Prices for both represent a gain over last week's prices at this time.
US crude oil production for week ending March 22 was 12.1 million bpd for the second week in a row.
Canada, too, saw a marked decline in the number of active rigs this week. Canada's total oil and gas rig count fell by 17 and is now 88, which is 46 fewer rigs than this time last year as Canada's oil industry continues to face steep uphill battles over its constrained pipeline capacity that is necessary to get its heavy crude to market along with production caps instituted to keep Western Canadian Select prices from falling further.
By 1:08pm EDT, WTI was trading up 1.28% (+$0.76) at $60.06 on the day. Brent crude was trading up 0.70% (+$0.47) at $67.57 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