U.S. oil output forecast to top Russia, Saudi Arabia in 2019
Permian Basin, drilling tech may lift country to world’s leading producer
The U.S. is on pace to leapfrog both Saudi Arabia and Russia and reclaim the title of the world’s biggest oil producer for the first time since 1974.
The latest forecast from the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts that U.S. output will grow next year to 11.8 million barrels a day.
“If the forecast holds, that would make the U.S. the world’s leading producer of crude,” says Linda Capuano, who heads the agency, a part of the Energy Department.
Saudi Arabia and Russia could upend that forecast by boosting their own production. In the face of rising global oil prices, members of the OPEC cartel and a few nonmembers including Russia agreed last month to ease production caps that had contributed to the run-up in prices.
President Donald Trump has urged the Saudis to pump more oil to contain rising prices.
The United States led the world in oil production for much of the 20th century, but the Soviet Union surpassed America in 1974, and Saudi Arabia did the same in 1976, according to Energy Department figures.
By the end of the 1970s the USSR was producing one-third more oil than the U.S.; by the end of the 1980s, Soviet output was nearly double that of the U.S.
The last decade or so has seen a revolution in American energy production, however, led by techniques including hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and horizontal drilling. Those innovations helped the U.S. narrow the gap, although Russia and Saudi Arabia both pumped more crude than the U.S. last year.
The U.S. has been pumping more than 10 million barrels a day since February, and probably pumped an average of 10.9 million barrels a day in June, up from 10.8 million in May.
The Permian Basin of eastern New Mexico and West Texas is responsible for much of that boom. With production at 171 million barrels in 2017, New Mexico was the nation’s thirdlargest oil-producing state after Texas and North Dakota.