Oil explorers shut down more rigs in U.S. fields to finish out the worst year for drilling cutbacks in almost three decades. Rigs targeting crude in the U.S. fell by 2 to 536 in the past week, Baker Hughes Inc. said on its website Thursday. Natural gas rigs were unchanged at 162, bringing the total of working rigs to 698. Drillers searching for oil this year idled the largest proportion of their rig fleet since at least 1988. In the 14 oil- and gas-rich regions tracked by Baker Hughes, rig counts declined or remained the same in all but two. Drillers in the Permian Basin of west Texas and New Mexico added five rigs in the last week to boost the total to 217, according to the report. In the Haynesville shale, a source of gas in east Texas and Louisiana, one additional rig was put to work. “I’m […]