Oil Rig Count Drops by 11, Hedge Funds Still Exiting Short Positions

Energy

Published: April 30, 2016 9:15 am

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 10:05 am

In the week ended April 29, the number of rigs drilling for oil in the United States totaled 332, compared with 343 in the prior week and 679 a year ago. Including 87 other rigs drilling for natural gas, there are a total of 420 working rigs in the country, down 11 week over week and down 485 year over year. There is one new rig listed as “miscellaneous.” 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 June delivery traded down less than 0.1% on Friday to settle at $45.99. The June contract rose about 5% in the week and was up 20% in the month of April. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported last Wednesday that crude supplies had increased by 2 million barrels in the week ended April 22 and that gasoline supplies had increased by 1.6 million barrels.

Crude oil made a solid comeback in April, reaching prices last seen in November of last year. While it is tempting to assign all (or at least most) of the increase to speculation in the oil markets, the situation is more complicated than that.

Production cuts, primarily in the United States, have begun to have an effect on the supply and demand balance. Consumption is rising even as production is falling. Thanks to low pump prices, people are driving more and buying new sport utility vehicles (SUVs), crossovers and pickups that are less fuel-efficient than most cars.

Global demand is expected to rise by 1.2 million barrels a day in 2016, on top of demand growth of 1.8 million barrels a day last year. Supplies are forecast to fall by 700,000 barrels a day, mostly in the second half of the year.

ALSO READ: Oil Markets: Driven by Fundamentals or Speculation?

Militating against these moves toward balance in the crude market is the amount of crude currently in storage. U.S. commercial crude inventories are at record highs, and the EIA has forecast OECD-member inventories to rise from 3.05 billion barrels at the end of 2015 to 3.22 billion barrels by the end of this year and to 3.25 by the end of 2017.

According to a report Friday from Reuters, there are currently about 7 million barrels of Brent crude loaded on tankers and sailing in circles in the North Sea awaiting buyers. Nearly 10 million barrels are doing the same thing off the coast of Nigeria. An analyst told Reuters that demand for crude to go into onshore storage tanks was a “big component of demand” in the first quarter of 2016, but that demand is expected to erode in the second quarter because it is “not economic to put oil in storage.”

The number of rigs drilling for oil in the United States is down by 347 year over year and down by 11 week over week. The natural gas rig count dropped by one rig to 87. The count for natural gas rigs is down by 135 year over year. Natural gas for June delivery closed the week at $2.14 per million BTUs, down 12 cents from $2.26 at the end of the prior week. The low price for natural gas over the past 12 months is $1.84 per million BTUs.

U.S. refineries ran at 88.1% of capacity, a week-over-week decrease of about 257,000 barrels a day. Imports fell by about 637,000 barrels a day, to around 7.6 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 — dumped 3,132 short contracts last week and also dropped 1,536 long contracts. The movement reflects changes as of the April 26 settlement date. Managed money holds 296,197 long positions compared with 72,730 short positions. Open interest totaled 1,714,689. There were 49 hedge funds with large short positions last week, down by four compared with the prior week. The so-called smart money can’t decide which way the market is headed, so it appears to be waiting on the sidelines for a more convincing signal.

Among the producers themselves, short positions outnumber longs by almost three to one, 461,052 to 169,991. The number of short positions rose by 8,273 contracts last week, and longs rose by 13,897 positions. Positions among swaps dealers show 254,690 short contracts versus 220,676 long positions. Swaps dealers added 6,143 contracts to their short positions last week and also added 1,222 long positions. With spot prices rising, producers are once more hedging future barrels as they try to lock-in a better price.

Among the states, New Mexico lost three rigs last week, while Kansas, Louisiana, Texas and West Virginia each lost two and Colorado lost one rig. No state added a rig during the week.

In the Permian Basin of west Texas and southeastern New Mexico, the rig count dropped by two to 134. The Eagle Ford Basin in south Texas dropped three rigs for a new total of 37, and the Williston Basin (Bakken) in North Dakota and Montana now has 26 working rigs, unchanged compared with the prior week.

Enterprise Products Partners L.P. (NYSE: EPD) lists a posted price of $38.63 per barrel for WTI and an April 23 price of $39.58 a barrel for Eagle Ford crude. The price for WTI rose by $2.79 a barrel over the past week while Eagle Ford crude shot up by $3.74 a barrel. Enterprise has not posted a price for North Dakota Light Sweet for the past five weeks.

The pump price of gasoline rose by about 3.6% week over week. Saturday morning’s average price in the United States was $2.208 a gallon, up from $2.131 a week ago. The year-ago price was $2.58 a gallon.

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