Energy
Oil Rig Count Drops by 8, Hedge Funds Pile Up Short Positions
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In the week ended April 8, the number of rigs drilling for oil in the United States totaled 354, compared with 362 in the prior week and 760 a year ago. Including 89 other rigs drilling for natural gas, there are a total of 443 working rigs in the country, down by seven week over week and down 545 year over year. The data come from the latest Baker Hughes Inc. (NYSE: BHI) North American Rotary Rig Count released on Friday.
West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil for May delivery traded up about 6.4% on Friday to settle at $39.66, a jump of about 7.8% for the week. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported last Wednesday that crude supplies had decreased by 4.9 million barrels in the week ended April 1 and that gasoline supplies had risen by 1.4 million barrels.
Last week’s increase in the price of crude got a boost from the decline in U.S. inventories, some dovish remarks from Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, a falling dollar and new hopes that an oil production cut will materialize following next week’s meeting in Doha.
What these events do not include is the continued difference between supply and demand. In the last update to its Short-Term Energy Outlook, the EIA forecast global oil inventories to increase by 1.6 million barrels a day in 2016 and another 600,000 barrels a day in 2017. Total world production in 2016 is forecast at 96.44 million barrels a day and consumption is forecast at 94.85 million barrels a day.
The number of rigs drilling for oil in the United States is down by 406 year over year and down by eight week over week. The natural gas rig count rose from 88 to 89. The count for natural gas rigs is down by 136 year over year. Natural gas for May delivery closed the week at $1.99 per million BTUs, up four cents from $1.95 at the end of the prior week. The low price for natural gas over the past 12 months is $1.73 per million BTUs.
U.S. refineries ran at 91.4% of capacity, a week-over-week increase of about 199,000 barrels a day. Imports fell by 494,000 barrels a day, to around 7.3 million barrels a day in the week.
Hedge funds — under the Managed Money heading in the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) weekly Commitments of Traders report — added 31,344 short contracts last week and dumped 1,330 long contracts. The movement reflects changes as of the April 5 settlement date. Managed money holds 289,770 long positions, compared with 113,262 short positions. Open interest totaled 1,773,774. There were 60 hedge funds with large short positions last week, up by five compared with the prior week. This marks the second week in a row that hedge funds have added to their short positions and the additions were more than double the number of short contracts added in the prior week.
Among the producers themselves, short positions outnumber longs by nearly three to one, 450,906 to 168,241. The number of short positions fell by 5,204 contracts last week, and longs increased by 1,102 positions. Positions among swaps dealers show 231,652 short contracts versus 226,490 long positions. Swaps dealers cut 6,723 contracts from their short positions last week and added 4,194 long positions.
Among the states, Texas lost seven rigs last week, North Dakota dropped two and Alaska, California and Kansas each lost a single rig each. Ohio and Oklahoma each added two rigs and New Mexico added one last week.
In the Permian Basin of west Texas and southeastern New Mexico, the rig count dropped by three to 142. The Eagle Ford Basin in south Texas added one rig for a new total of 43, and the Williston Basin (Bakken) in North Dakota and Montana now has 27 working rigs, down two compared with the prior week.
Enterprise Products Partners L.P. (NYSE: EPD) lists a posted price of $36.17 per barrel for WTI and an April 9 price of $37.12 a barrel for Eagle Ford crude. The price for both varieties rose by $2.93 a barrel over the past week. Enterprise has not posted a price for North Dakota Light Sweet for the past two weeks.
The pump price of gasoline fell by about 0.8% week over week. Saturday morning’s average price in the United States was $2.042 a gallon, up from $2.059 a week ago.
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