The US oil and gas rig count fell this week, according to Baker Hughes, decreasing by 5 for the week, according to Baker Hughes. This week marks eight decreases in the last nine weeks.
The total oil and gas rig count now stands at 851, or 216 down from this time last year.
The total number of active oil rigs in the United States increased by 1 according to the report, reaching 713. The number of active gas rigs decreased by 6 to reach 137.
Oil rigs have seen a loss of 160 rigs year on year, with gas rigs down 57 since this time last year.
Even though the number of oil rigs have declined by 164 this year alone, production has grown from 11.7 million bpd at the beginning of the year to 12.6 million bpd for the week ending October 11-a growth of almost 1 million bpd in less than a year.
Oil prices were trading down on Friday ahead of the data on persistent weak economic data-this time from China-which showed China's economic growth slowed to 6% year over year for the third quarter-the weakest data in more than 25 years.
Related: Russia Ready To Seize Control Of The World's Largest Oil Reserves
At 12:28 pm EDT today, WTI was down $0.05 (-0.09%) at $53.88-a drop of about $0.40 since this time last week. Brent crude was trading down on the day as well, by $0.33 (-0.55%) at $59.58, or a $0.50 decrease from last week.
Canada's overall rig count decreased this week, with oil and gas rigs falling by 3, after last week's 2-rig increase. Oil and gas rigs in Canada are down 48 year-on-year.
WTI was trading down 0.82% shortly after data release, while Brent was trading down 1.24%.
By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com
More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Julianne Geiger is a veteran editor, writer and researcher for Oilprice.com, and a member of the Creative Professionals Networking Group. More
Comments