America’s producing more oil than ever before
Production has hit 13.4 million barrels a day, as America’s oil industry does more with less.
In 1977, President Jimmy Carter addressed the nation in a speech warning America about the potential dangers of energy dependence. Demand for oil was soaring and America “[couldn’t] substantially increase our domestic production” — forcing the country to rely on imports of oil. Now, 47 years on, Carter has had two things to celebrate in the last month: his 100th birthday and record US oil production.
Indeed, American crude-oil production rose 1.5% in August to hit a record 13.4 million barrels a day, as the top producing states of Texas and New Mexico saw output hit fresh record highs of 5.82 million and 2.09 million, respectively.
Well that was productive
Despite the number of oil rigs dropping to less than a third of the level 10 years ago and the workforce shrinking in the same period, too, oil has become one of the most productive industries in the US over the past decade. That production boom is expected to run into next year as well, with some predicting that we’ll be making an extra 600,000 barrels each day in 2025.
Indeed, the US has been consistently producing more crude oil than any nation in history for the last six years, according to figures from the Energy Information Administration, after overtaking Russia as the world’s top producer in 2018 and becoming a net exporter of oil in 2019.
US crude-oil prices saw the biggest daily drop in over a year earlier this week, and analysis from the World Bank suggests that costs will continue to fall next year as global supply looks set to outstrip demand.
Note: even though the weekly data from the US EIA is much more timely — in this case, available as recently as October 25 — it’s considerably less reliable. The monthly report is based on a much more comprehensive survey, and the trends between weekly and monthly production estimates can vary significantly, even over extended periods of time. For its part, the EIA says the monthly figures “can serve as a definitive historical benchmark” while the weekly data is more of a “near-term estimate of recent history.”
