In the week ended June 12, the number of rigs drilling for oil in the United States totaled 635, compared with 642 in the prior week and 1,542 a year ago. Including 224 other rigs mostly drilling for natural gas, there are a total of 859 working rigs in the country, down nine week-over-week and down 995 year-over-year. The data come from the latest Baker Hughes Inc. (NYSE: BHI) North American Rotary Rig Count.

Last weekend the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) said that member nations would maintain the stated production quota of 30 million barrels a day, and within a few days, the International Energy Agency (IEA) and OPEC itself would report that production in May was right around 31 million barrels a day: the IEA reported OPEC production of 31.33 million barrels a day and OPEC cited “secondary sources” for reporting production of 30.98 million barrels.

Demand has risen and both the IEA and OPEC now expect demand to be higher in 2015 that it was in 2014. As demand has risen, so have prices, which is exactly what OPEC was angling for last November. But as the IEA pointed out in its monthly oil market report last week, global crude oil production has soared, even as product inventories remain out of balance, and that mismatch between product supply and product demand seems to be supporting prices.

The number of rigs drilling for oil in North America fell by 907 year-over-year and fell by seven week-over-week. The natural gas rig count decreased by one to a total of 221. The rig count for natural gas rigs is down by 89 year-over-year.

U.S. crude stockpiles fell by 6.8 million barrels last week, the sixth consecutive weekly decrease. Gasoline stockpiles also fell as refineries continued to run at more than 94% of capacity, up about 169,000 barrels a day from the previous week. Gasoline inventories have slipped into the upper half of the five-year average range.

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Hedge funds — under the Managed Money heading in the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Commitments of Traders report — cut their long positions last week by 6,077 contracts and increased their short positions by 1,827. The movement reflects changes as of the June 9 settlement date. Managed money holds 298,385 long positions, compared with 61,767 short positions.

While hedge funds remain heavily long (as we would expect), the prevailing sentiment last week seemed to be toward lower prices. Over the past few months, there has been very little movement in the December 2015 contract price for crude: in January the futures price for a barrel of December crude traded at around $59; the same barrel closed at $61.44 on Friday. That is not to say that the December futures have not been volatile, but since mid-April even that volatility has been subdued.

Among the producers themselves, short positions outnumber longs, 361,811 to 196,169. The number of short positions last week fell by 6,592 contracts, while longs dropped 2,804 positions. Positions among swaps dealers show 360,156 shorts versus 200,664 longs. Swaps dealers added 2,325 contracts to their long positions last week and dropped 8,708 short contracts.

No state lost more than one rig last week, with Oklahoma and Louisiana adding one rig each as the week’s only gainers. Rig counts in Arkansas, California, North Dakota, Pennsylvania and Wyoming remained unchanged.

In the Permian Basin of west Texas and southeastern New Mexico, the rig count fell by one to 232. The Eagle Ford Basin in south Texas added one rig and reports that 104 are now working. The Williston Basin (Bakken) in North Dakota and Montana has 76 working rigs, unchanged from the prior week.

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Enterprise Products Partners L.P. (NYSE: EPD) lists a posted price of $56.41 per barrel for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and a June 13 price of $51.96 a barrel for North Dakota Light Sweet and a posted price of $56.21 a barrel for Eagle Ford crude. All prices are higher than they were a week ago.

The pump price of gasoline increased week-over-week. Saturday morning’s average price in the United States is $2.798 a gallon, up about 1.6% from $2.754 a week ago.

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