Baker Hughes reported a 7-rig increase to the number of oil rigs this week, with a decrease of 7 gas rigs for the reporting period.
The result of no increase or decrease to the number of oil and gas rigs this week will likely come as a slight reprieve to battered traders who took it on the chin last week as oil prices plummeted.
The total number of oil and gas rigs holds steady at 975, which is an addition of 2224 rigs year over year.
The number of oil rigs in the United States stands at 798, or 201 over this time last year. The number of gas rigs, which fell by 7 this week, now stands at 177, or 24 rigs above this week last year.
At 12:01 pm EST, the price of a WTI barrel was trading up $0.47 (+0.77%) to $61.64-about a $2 recovery from last week's dip of $59.80. The Brent barrel trading up $0.73 (+1.13%) to $65.06, also almost $2 per barrel over last week's prices. Both benchmarks are down from January prices.
Prices have been volatile in recent weeks, but most notably last week, on the back of higher US production, higher crude oil inventories, and an updated IEA forecast that warned that a new glut may be coming on the back of robust US crude oil production. US crude oil production rose again in the week ending February 9, to 10.271 million bpd-a new high-and up from last week's high of 10.251 million bpd.
The Permian basin rig count lost the most rigs this week with a loss of 4.
At 1:08pm EST, WTI was trading at $61.67 (+$0.50) with Brent trading at $65.01 (+$0.68).
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