- West Texas Intermediate rose for the third consecutive day Thursday morning following the selloff earlier in the week
- Wednesday’s oil rally was the largest gain in three months as traders have almost recouped all of Monday’s 7.5% decline
- Oil field services company Baker Hughes said shale drilling in North America is going to slow in the second half of this year
- Oil prices are high enough to encourage drillers to add rigs and increase supply, but investors have called on public operators to instead distribute profits to shareholders (Bloomberg)
- The North American rig count will climb by about 50 through the end of 2021, according to Baker Hughes
- The rig count has been moving higher since hitting a low of 278 in June of last year. The rig count stood at 634 last week
- Rig activity has rebounded from the lows of last year, but growth has been led by private operators, a trend that is set to continue in 2022, according to Baker Hughes
- Platts, a price reporting agency, has again opened a consultation of the future of its Dated Brent crude benchmark, this time in a partnership with ICE (Argus)
- The joint published white paper, Platts and ICE laid out two proposals that might solve the problem of dwindling physical volumes underpinning Dated Brent
- One solution involves adding US crude WTI into the basket of North Sea grades used to mark Dated Brent