By Barani Krishnan
Investing.com - Crude prices finished with a second straight week of double-digit gains on Friday after the U.S. oil rig count hit financial crisis lows.
West Texas Intermediate, the benchmark for U.S. crude, settled up $1.19, or 5%, at $24.74 per barrel.
For the week, WTI was up 25%, pushing through with the previous week’s near 17% gain as traders and investors bet on slumping oil production and nascent recovery in demand from a reopening of the U.S. economy from Covid-19 lockdowns.
“WTI is still the cheapest barrel to run in North America and that tells me it should continue to perform,” said Scott Shelton, energy futures broker at ICAP (LON:NXGN) in Durham, N.C.
London-traded Brent, the global benchmark for oil, finished up $1.51, or 5%, at $30.97. For the week, Brent was up nearly 17%, after last week’s gain of more than 23%.
U.S. oil rigs, as measured by oil services firm Baker Hughes, fell by 33 this week to reach 292. The number had previously never fallen beneath 300, since the 2008/09 financial crisis.
The record low for U.S. oil rigs was 98, seen in November 2002. But a combination of oil and gas rigs, known as the total rig count, hit a record low of 374, after falling by 34 this week, according to Baker Hughes, which has been tracking those numbers since 1940.