In the week ended October 16, the number of rigs drilling for oil in the United States totaled 595, compared with 605 in the prior week and 1,590 a year ago. Including 192 other rigs drilling for natural gas, there are a total of 787 working rigs in the country, down by eight week over week and down 1,131 year over year. The data come from the latest Baker Hughes Inc. (NYSE: BHI) North American Rotary Rig Count.

Benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil for November delivery bounced to a high of $47.50 a barrel on Friday, before settling at $47.25 to close the week down by about 4.5%. Crude for December delivery has taken over as the most active contract and settled at $47.72 on Friday, after touching a weekly high of $50.62 on Monday.

Last week marks the seventh consecutive week with a drop in the rig count, but traders appear to have lost faith in a bounce higher. Brent crude for December delivery settled at $50.46 a barrel on Friday, as the differential between Brent and WTI continues to narrow.

In addition to the weekly report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, both OPEC and the International Energy Agency (IEA) issued their monthly reports last week. OPEC upped its estimate of demand growth for 2015 and crowed a little about how well its policy is working to maintain its market share. What the cartel failed to mention is that the price it is getting for its crude has barely improved.

The IEA expects demand growth to fall from around 1.8 million barrels a day in 2015 to 1.2 million barrels a day in 2016. The agency noted that OPEC production totaled 31.72 million barrels a day in September and that the call on OPEC supply will drop to 31.1 million barrels a day in 2016.

ALSO READ: Jefferies Has Turned Very Bullish on Oil: 6 Top Reasons Why

The number of rigs drilling for oil in the United States is down by 995 year over year and down by 10 week over week. The natural gas rig count rose by three, from 186 to 189. The count for natural gas rigs is down by 136 year over year.

Gasoline stockpiles decreased by 2.6 million barrels last week. U.S. refineries ran at just 86% of capacity as they continue to perform scheduled maintenance and switch to winter-grade fuel.

Hedge funds — under the Managed Money heading in the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) weekly Commitments of Traders report — dumped 17,256 short contracts last week and also shed 8,381 long contracts. The movement reflects changes as of the October 13 settlement date. Managed money holds 269,937 long positions, compared with 87,595 short positions. Open interest decreased by 29,725 contracts to 1,645,951 week over week. The number of hedge funds with large short positions slipped from 52 to 51 last week.

Among the producers themselves, short positions outnumber longs, 390,576 to 204,960. The number of short positions last week rose by 28,718 contracts and longs rose by 28,220 positions. Positions among swaps dealers show 296,286 shorts versus 207,035 longs. Swaps dealers added 9,665 contracts to their short positions last week and dropped 11,491 long contracts.

Among the states, New Mexico dropped five rigs last week, while Oklahoma and Texas each lost two. North Dakota and Colorado each dropped one. Wyoming added two rigs and California added one. The other seven states that Baker-Hughes tracks posted no change in their rig counts.

In the Permian Basin of west Texas and southeastern New Mexico, the rig count fell by two to 233. The Eagle Ford Basin in south Texas dropped four rigs to bring its count to 76, and the Williston Basin (Bakken) in North Dakota and Montana now has 64 working rigs, down one from the prior week.

ALSO READ: Oppenheimer Starts Coverage on Clean Tech Stocks With Huge Upside

Enterprise Products Partners L.P. (NYSE: EPD) lists a posted price of $43.71 per barrel for WTI and an October 17 price of $38.38 a barrel for North Dakota Light Sweet. The posted price for a barrel of Eagle Ford crude is $43.66. The price for all three crude grades fell by about $2.37 in the past week.

The pump price of gasoline decreased week over week. Saturday morning’s average price in the United States was $2.27 a gallon, down about 2.2% from $2.32 a week ago.

Thank you for reading! Have some feedback for us?
Contact the 24/7 Wall St. editorial team.