国际英语新闻:Oil prices plummet amid U.S. drilling rigs down

HOUSTON, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Major oil benchmarks were in a nose dive on Friday. Around 3 p.m. local time in Houston, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude for January delivery and Brent crude for January delivery fell over 7 percent and 6 percent, respectively.

Meanwhile, WTI lost over 4 U.S. dollars but still standing at 50-dollar levels, and Brent reduced almost 4 dollars to 58.8 dollars. Both hit the lowest in more than a year.

Due to concerns with the oversupply in the market, oil prices have been keeping fall recently and they are set to post the seventh consecutive weekly loss for this week.

Amid the oil prices going down, the number of active drilling rigs in the United States decreased by three to 1,079 this week, but still 156 more than in the same period last year, according to Houston-based Baker Hughes.

According to the latest data released on Wednesday, two days in advance due to the Thanksgiving holiday, the count of land drilling rigs in the country decreased by six to 1,052, and the number of offshore drilling rigs increased by three to 25. The number of inland waters rigs stayed level at two.

The number of directional drilling rigs increased by two to 73. The number of horizontal drilling rigs fell by 10 to 929, and the number of vertical drilling rigs increased by five to 77.

The U.S. state of Louisiana led the gain with an increase of four to 69 rigs, while the state of Texas fell by three to 532 rigs.

The number of rigs operating in U.S. oil fields decreased by three to 885 in the week, and more than half of the oil rigs were located in the Permian Basin region of western Texas and southeastern New Mexico. The number of rigs drilling for gas stayed steady at 194 this week.