U.S. drillers added 2 rigs to the number of oil and gas rigs this week, according to Baker Hughes, with oil and gas rigs each increasing by 1. The oil and gas rig count now stands at 1,062-up 135 from this time last year. The Permian basin saw the biggest increase in the number of rigs, at 3. The prolific basin now boasts 112 rigs year over year at 480 total rigs. The second largest basin, Eagle Ford, has 80 total rigs-a decrease year over year.
Canada, for its part, gained 13 oil rigs for the week-after last week's gain of 18 oil and gas rigs. Despite two weeks of significant gains, Canada's oil and gas rig count is still down year over year.
Oil benchmarks were trading down on Friday, despite Venezuela's freefalling oil production and export woes that has created a backlog of 24 million barrels in the country, combined with the threat of even more crude oil export disruptions in Iran as US sanctions set in in the coming months.
At 1:00pm EST, WTI was trading down 0.44% (-$0.29) to $65.66, with Brent down 0.92% (-$0.71) to $76.61. Brent crude is trading at nearly the same level as this time last week, but the WTI benchmark is trading almost $1 lower than last week levels.
U.S. oil production continues putting downward pressure on oil prices, and for the week ending June 01, production reached 10.800 million bpd-the fifteenth build in as many weeks. U.S. production continues to offset OPEC's production cut efforts that took 1.8 million barrels out of play.
At 14 minutes after the hour, WTI was trading down 0.50% at $65.62, with Brent trading down 1.01% at $76.54.
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