Mixed Data on Oil Rig Counts (BHI)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Oil Well ImageBaker Hughes Incorporated (NYSE:BHI) has released its June data for rig counts.  The bad news is that there are still some drops being recorded in rig counts from May, and these counts still look atrocious if you take a year over year comparison from when oil prices were through the roof.  We would note, however, that this is slightly misleading if you just look at the raw data.  We have seen a firming of these rig counts over the last two weeks, even if this firming is still very far from robust growth.

Baker Hughes said that the international rig count for June 2009 was 967, down 26 from the 993 counted in May 2009, and down 135 from the 1,102 counted in June 2008.

The international offshore rig count for June 2009 was 269, down 3 from the 272 counted in May 2009 and down 52 from the 321 counted in June 2008.

The US rig count for June 2009 was 895, down 23 from the 918 counted in May 2009 and down 1,006 from the 1,901 counted in June 2008.

As you will see, there is a total gain on some of the data on a monthly basis.  On an annual basis it is way down, but prices are also less than half year-ago levels for oil.

The Canadian rig count for June 2009 was 125, up 53 from the 72 counted in May 2009 and down 141 from the 266 counted in June 2008.

The worldwide rig count for June 2009 was 1,987, up 4 from the 1,983 counted in May 2009 and down 1,282 from the 3,269 counted in June 2008.

We’ll be watching this Friday’s weekly count to see if the firming and gaining trend can continue now that oil has pulled back into the low $60’s per barrel from $70+ just in the last two weeks.

JON C. OGG
JULY 8, 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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