Baker Hughes reported a dip in the number of active oil and gas rigs in the United States today. Oil and gas rigs decreased by 3 rigs, according to the report, with the number of oil rigs increasing by 1, and the number of gas rigs decreasing by 4.
The oil and gas rig count now stands at 1,059-up 126 from this time last year.
Canada, for its part, gained 27 oil rigs for the week-after last week's gain of 13 oil and gas rigs. Despite weeks of significant gains, Canada's oil and gas rig count is still down by 20 year over year.
Oil benchmarks experienced a huge slide on Friday as Russia and Saudi Arabia proclaimed their willingness to increase output ahead of the June 22 OPEC/NOPEC meeting in Vienna, even if the oil production cut deal were to fall apart. The loose commitment by two of the largest signees to the production cut deal was enough to drag down prices that were earlier being pulled upwards by Venezuela's freefalling oil production that some think will fall below 1 million barrels per day, and continuing reports that Iran may face multiple obstacles on the road to exporting its oil in the wake of renewed sanctions levied by the United States. Related: The Permian Faces A Long Term Natural Gas Crisis
At 12:07pm EDT, the WTI benchmark was trading down a massive 3.36% (-$2.25) to $64.64, with Brent down 3.48% (-$2.64) to $73.30. Both benchmarks are down week on week as well as on the day.
US oil production continues putting downward pressure on oil prices, and for the week ending June 08, production reached 10.900 million bpd-just a hair shy of the 11 million bpd production that many had forecast for the year.
At 7 minutes after the hour, WTI was trading down 2.93% at $64.93, with Brent trading down 3.29% at $73.44.
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