Latest rig count by Baker Hughes

At 1:00 p.m. ET, we’ll get the latest count of US oil and gas rigs from driller Baker Hughes.

Last week, the number of oil rigs fell by 8 to 660.

The count of combined oil and gas rigs fell by 6 to 888.

Ahead of the data, West Texas Intermediate crude oil was down about 1%, trading near US$59.74 per barrel. The trade lower follows a rally on Thursday that took WTI back above US$60 per barrel.

Last week recorded the slowest pace of declines in this 23-week streak, amid commentary by some analysts that there’s a slowdown in drilling activity.

Here’s a comment we highlighted earlier this week via Morgan Stanley, following an oil and gas industry conference in Houston:

“Within the outlook for improving returns, we heard a consistent message across US shale E&P’s that the focus would be returns and profitability rather than a headlong rush back to volume at any price.”

Here’s the latest chart showing the plunge in the rig count. This will be updated as soon as the numbers cross.