The US oil and gas rig count fell again this week, decreasing by 6 for the week, according to Baker Hughes, but US oil companies are pumping oil at record rates.
The total oil and gas rig count now stands at 898, or 150 down from this time last year.
The total number of active oil rigs in the United States decreased by 4 according to the report, reaching 738. The number of active gas rigs decreased by 2 to reach 160.
Oil rigs have seen a loss of 122 rigs year on year, with gas rigs down 26 since this time last year.
Year-to-date, the oil rig count has fallen from 858 active rigs since the beginning of the year to 738, while gas rigs have fallen from 187 to 160 during that same time.
US weekly oil production is still near an all-time high despite the declining rig count, at 12.4 million bpd for week ending August 30.
Oil was trading down on Friday ahead of the data on persistent oil demand concerns stemming from the China/US trade war, which continues to plague the industry as well as OPEC. The cartel continues to struggle to keep supply at a level that will push prices to a level that is profitable for their oil-dependent economies.
At 11:20 am EDT today WTI was down almost 1.10%, but was still up $0.55 on the week. Brent was down on the day as well, by 0.75%, but up on the week by about $0.70.
Canada's overall rig count decreased this week. Oil and gas rigs decreased by 3, after last week's 11-rig increase. Oil and gas rigs in Canada are down 57 year on year.
WTI was trading up 0.66% shortly after data release, while Brent was trading up 1.03%.
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
Comments
I keep making this point at this site - but you folk DO NOT seem to register.
Your quote above is based on US weekly field production, which is always inaccurate and never corrected post-facto with updated weekly data.
If one instead looks at monthly data - which is considered more accurate and is also continuously corrected post-facto to ensure accuracy, a different picture emerges.
Specifically, weekly estimates have overstated actual production by 306, 208, 66, 132 million bpd for the last four months of 2019.
Do the numbers yourself - data can be found at ...
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=mcrfpus2&f=m
and
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=WCRFPUS2&f=W
Taking this into account, the discrepancy between dropping rig counts and production seems far less anomalous.
Also - it seems to me Oilprice is missing an important story - "whatsup with this discrepancy between weekly and monthly production data?".
This seems an interesting conundrum to bring to light to your readers - especially since the inaccurate weekly data appears to have more of an effect on the day to day market (especially at Oilprice.com) than the more accurate monthly data.