HOUSTON, Aug. 25 (Xinhua) -- The number of active drilling rigs in the United States declined by 13 to 1,044 in the week ending Aug. 24, but still 104 more than this time last year, showed weekly data collected by Baker Hughes released on Friday.
Meanwhile, the price of the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for October delivery and Brent for October delivery increased by 5.4 percent and 5.6 percent, respectively, during the week.
The Houston-based oilfield services company reported that the number of active oil rigs in the country declined by nine to 860 in the week with more than half of oil rigs, or 485, were located in the Permian Basin region of western Texas and southeastern New Mexico. The number of gas rigs in the country also declined by four to 182.
Analysts attributed the stagnant rig counts in the recent months to the pipeline bottlenecks. They saw those pipeline bottlenecks as a big threat against production growth in the Permian Basin.
Most of the oil production growth of the United States comes from the Permian Basin and that supply needs to be transported somehow to the Gulf refineries or to the ports in order to be exported.
In the same week, Canada's total rig count increased by 17 to 229, or up by 12 year on year. Its oil rig count increased by 12 and its gas rig count increased by five, respectively. Oil rigs were up by 38 year on year in Canada, while the number of gas rigs was down by 26 despite the five gas rigs added.
Analysts attributed the major decline in the Canadian gas rig count to the very low gas prices on the Canadian natural gas spot market. The natural gas producers prefer curtailing their production rather than increasing it in the current depressed market.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported on Wednesday that U.S. commercial crude oil inventories, excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), decreased by 5.8 million barrels during the week ending Aug. 17. In the previous week, EIA reported a build of 6.8 million barrels.
According to EIA, U.S. crude oil refinery inputs averaged 17.89 million barrels per day during the week ending Aug. 17 which was 89,000 per day lower than the previous week's average.
U.S. crude oil imports averaged 7.51 million barrels per day, 1.49 million barrels per day lower than the previous week's average. Over the past four weeks, crude oil imports averaged 8.05 million barrels per day, 2.2 percent lower than the same four-week period last year.
U.S. crude oil exports averaged 1.15 million barrels per day, 437,000 barrels per day lower than the previous week's average. Over the past four weeks, crude oil imports averaged 1.47 million barrels per day.
Total motor gasoline inventories increased by 1.2 million barrels, about 1.9 percent above the levels of the same week last year.
Distillate fuel inventories increased by 1.8 million barrels, 11.8 percent below the levels of the same week last year. Total commercial petroleum inventories decreased by 2.5 million barrels.
Total products supplied over the last four-week period averaged 20.80 million barrels per day, down by 1.1 percent from the same period last year. Over the past four weeks, motor gasoline supplied averaged 9.54 million barrels per day, down by 1.5 percent from the same period last year.
Distillate fuel supplied over the last four-week period averaged 3.90 million barrels per day, down by 7.7 percent from the same period last year. Over the past four weeks, jet fuel supplied averaged 1.83 million barrels per day, up by 3.7 percent from the same period last year.