U.S. oil drillers cut rigs for 7th week -Baker Hughes

Oct 16 (Reuters) - U.S. energy firms cut oil rigs this week
for a seventh week in a row, the longest streak of reductions
since June, data showed on Friday, a sign low prices continued
to keep drillers away from the well pad.
Drillers removed 10 oil rigs in the week ended Oct. 16,
bringing the total rig count down to 595, the least since July
2010. Over the prior six weeks, drillers had cut 70 rigs, oil
services company Baker Hughes (N:BHI) Inc BHI.N said in its closely
followed report.
That total was less than half the 1,590 oil rigs in the
prior year. Since hitting an all-time high of 1,609 in October
last year, weekly rig count reductions have averaged about 20.
The reductions over the past several weeks have erased the
47 oil rigs energy firms added over the summer when several
drillers followed through on plans to add rigs announced in May
and June when U.S. crude futures averaged $60 a barrel.
U.S. oil futures CLc1 this week averaged $47 a barrel,
down from an average of $48 last week, in choppy trade driven up
and down by mostly technical buying and selling. O/R
"The current rig count is still pointing to U.S. production
declining sequentially between the second and fourth quarters of
2015 by 255,000 barrels a day," analysts at Goldman Sachs (N:GS) said,
noting production was expected to grow modestly in 2016.
Despite drilling cutbacks, U.S. oil production edged up to
9.4 million barrels per day (bpd) in July from 9.3 million bpd
in June, according to the latest U.S. Energy Information
Administration's (EIA) 914 production report. urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL1N12027G
On a weekly basis, the amount of U.S. oil pulled out of the
ground has remained about 9.1 million bpd since the start of
September, according to EIA's weekly field production report,
well below the 9.6 million bpd peak seen in April.