Rig Counts and Oil Price Chasing (BHI, USO, OIL)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Oil Well ImageBaker Hughes Incorporated (NYSE:BHI) announced today that the international rig count for May 2009 and it looks like the endless slide we saw all of 2009 is being confirmed as either over or at least severely moderating on the international front.  The count is the U.S. and Canada is still lower, but the most recent weekly data seen in the last two weeks seems better than the overall monthly trends.  The United States Oil (NYSE: USO) ETF is up 0.5% at $37.87 and the iPath S&P GSCI Crude Oil Total Return Index ETN (NYSE: OIL) is up 0.6% at $25.03 in early trading.  Where these ETF’s trade will more likely come from changes in the Dollar and oil prices rather than based on the May rig counts.

The new international rig count for the end of May was 993.  That is a gain of 7 from the 986 counted in April 2009, but is still down 82 from the 1,075 counted in May 2008.

The international offshore rig count for May 2009 was 272, which is down 1 rig from the 273 counted in April 2009 and is down 33 from the 305 counted in May 2008.

The US rig count for May 2009 was 918, and that is down 77 from the 995 counted in April 2009 and down 945 from the 1,863 counted in May 2008.

The Canadian rig count for May 2009 was 72, down 2 from the 74 counted in April 2009 and down 63 from the 135 counted in May 2008.

The worldwide rig count for May 2009 was 1,983, down 72 from the 2,055 counted in April 2009 and down 1,090 from the 3,073 counted in May 2008.

The United States Oil and the iPath S&P GSCI Crude Oil Total Return Index ETN are reacting to the positive move in oil after the jobs data rather than the rig count data.

Jon C. Ogg
June 5, 2009

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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