We study the creation and annihilation of domain walls in a permalloy nanowire by local Oersted fields of current pulses passing through a perpendicularly aligned stripline. The occurrence of both processes is investigated for current pulses of different polarities and for various external magnetic fields. Reliable creation and annihilation are achieved for small and zero external fields, while higher externally applied fields lead to the suppression of both processes as well as to the creation of multiple domain walls in the wire. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. {[}http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4711222]