UPDATE 1-U.S. oil drillers cut rigs for 7th week -Baker Hughes

(Adds basin details, natgas rigs, paragraphs 4-8)
Oct 16 (Reuters) - U.S. energy companies 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.
While the total U.S. oil and gas rigs fell to another
13-year low, natural gas rigs were up three to 192. With that
increase, gas rigs were just over the lowest level in at least
28 years, according to Baker Hughes data going back to 1987.
Traders look to the rig count as an indicator of whether
production may rise or fall over the next several months.
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
Drillers reduced the number of oil wells in three of the
four major U.S. shale oil basins this week. Three were cut in
the Permian in West Texas and eastern New Mexico; two in the
Eagle Ford in South Texas; and one in the Bakken in North Dakota
and Montana. There were no changes in the Niobrara in Colorado
and Wyoming.
"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