In the week ended September 25, the number of rigs drilling for oil in the United States totaled 640, compared with 644 in the prior week and 1,592 a year ago. Including 198 other rigs mostly drilling for natural gas, there are a total of 838 working rigs in the country, down by four week over week and down 1,093 year over year. The data come from the latest Baker Hughes Inc. (NYSE: BHI) North American Rotary Rig Count.

West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil for November delivery bounced to a high of around $47.15 a barrel last week before settling at $45.34 on Friday, up about 1.5% for the week. The price spiked immediately following Wednesday’s announcement of U.S. crude inventories.

Last week marks the fourth consecutive week with a drop in the rig count. The differential between a barrel of WTI crude and a barrel of Brent crude rose slightly to $3.68 per barrel, largely due to a drop in U.S. production. According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, June 2015 oil production totaled 9.29 million barrels per day, down from 9.61 million in April and 9.4 million in May.

The number of rigs drilling for oil in the United States is down by 952 year over year and down by four week over week. The natural gas rig count slipped by one, from 198 to 197. The count for natural gas rigs is down by 141 year over year.

Gasoline stockpiles increased by 1.4 million barrels last week.

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Hedge funds — under the Managed Money heading in the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) weekly Commitments of Traders report — dumped 10,168 short contracts last week and added 9,386 contracts to their long positions. The movement reflects changes as of the September 22 settlement date. Managed money holds 269,393 long positions compared with 105,552 short positions. Open interest decreased by about 96,732 contracts to 1,606,217 week over week. Hedge funds continue to unwind short positions, and that is helping to prop up prices. The number of hedge funds with large short positions fell from 59 to 53 last week.

Among the producers themselves, short positions outnumber longs 324,842 to 154,984. The number of short positions last week fell by 14,940 contracts and longs fell by 31,732 positions. Positions among swaps dealers show 287,469 shorts versus 207,556 longs. Swaps dealers dropped 10,173 contracts from their short positions last week and cut 4,194 long contracts.

Among the states, Texas dropped two rigs, and Arkansas, North Dakota and Oklahoma each dropped one. New Mexico added one rig and the rest of the states showed no change. In the Permian Basin of west Texas and southeastern New Mexico, the rig count fell by three to 250. The Eagle Ford Basin in south Texas also dropped three rigs to bring its count to 85, and the Williston Basin (Bakken) in North Dakota and Montana now has 67 working rigs, down one from the prior week.

Enterprise Products Partners LP (NYSE: EPD) lists a posted price of $42.15 per barrel for WTI and a September 26 price of $34.85 a barrel for North Dakota Light Sweet. The posted price for a barrel of Eagle Ford crude is $42.10. The price for all grades rose by $1.02 over the past week.

The pump price of gasoline decreased week over week. Saturday morning’s average price in the United States was $2.287 a gallon, down a penny from $2.297 a week ago.

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