US weekly rig count higher as Texas rises again, WTI steady on week
Quantum Commodity Intelligence - North American drilling activity ticked higher for the fifth time in six weeks during the week ending October 21, oilfield services firm Baker Hughes reported.
The total weekly rig count was up by two units to 771, with the number 229 higher from the 542 at the same time in 2021 and the highest volume since March 2020.
The number of rigs dedicated to crude was up by two units, standing at 612, while the number of rigs drilling for natural gas was unchanged at 157.
Texas jumped by a healthy six units to 371, up 122 on the year, while the Permian Basin, spread across west Texas and New Mexico, held steady at 346, an increase of 78 on the year.
Texas has now increased the number of rigs by 11 in the past two weeks.
Output in the Permian, the country's largest shale oil basin, is forecast to increase by about 50,000 bpd to a record 5.453 million bpd in November, the Energy Information Administration said last week.
Prices
In the week ending 21 Oct. US benchmark WTI were marginally higher as prices stabilized following the 6. 5% losses in the previous week.
NYMEX WTI trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange settled Friday at $85.05/b for the Dec22 contract, up a modest 0.5% on the week.
Over the same week, front-month Dec22 ICE Brent futures closed at $93.50/b, up 2%.
US President Joe Biden last week confirmed the sale of 15 million barrels of crude oil from strategic reserves in an announcement Wednesday and remains open to additional sales if prices spike again while setting a repurchase price at $67-72/b.
The Department of Energy will release its final tranche of the originally planned sale in December, amounting to 180 million barrels since its announcement in March.
US commercial crude oil stocks fell by 1.72 million barrels in the week to October 14 to 437.36 million barrels, while SPR stocks fell by 3.5 million barrels on the week to 405.1 million, its lowest since June 1984.
