Baker Hughes Inc. (NYSE: BHI) has released the weekly rig counts. The bad news is that these rig counts are still declining. The good news is that this really appears to be stabilizing at least some on the rate of change. Here is this week’s count:
U.S. Rig Count is down 10 from last week at 945; down 894 year over year.
Canadian Rig Count up 2 from last week at 67; down 28 year over year.
The U.S. Offshore rig count is 51, unchanged from last week; down 18 year over year.
We have noticed how oil inventories keep rising and rising. That is obvious demand destruction taking effect, and the unemployment rate heading closer and closer to double-digits may keep that demand subdued for longer than normal.
We can’t pull out any stops here and call an absolute drop in rig counts. But again, the rate of change is much lower and even if there is a further drop through time we would guess that this will come at a much slower rate than what we saw in the first months of 2009 and late in 2008.
So far we have not seen any sharp reactions in oil. The United States Oil ETF (NYSE: USO) is still up 4% at $29.82.
JON C. OGG
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