United States hits a major milestone as petroleum exporter
‘This is a very big deal, not just rich in symbolism’
After years of relying on other countries for petroleum, the United States officially has reached a new energy-producing milestone by notching its first month in at least 70 years exporting more crude oil and petroleum products than it imported per day.
During the month of September, the country sent out 89,000 barrels a day more than it brought in, according to new official data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration released over the long Thanksgiving weekend.
That marks the first full month the US as been a net petroleum exporter since recordkeeping began in 1949. The country, which for years has been on the path to becoming a net oil exporter, first posted net petroleum exports on a weekly basis in December 2018.
The monthly milestone, fueled by an outpouring of fracked oil, was unthinkable just more than a decade ago when president after president from Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama spent their State of the Union addresses hammering home the need to wean the United States off dependence on foreign oil.
“This is a very big deal, not just rich in symbolism but marking a major and tangible benefit to the U.S. economy,” said Daniel Yergin, vice chairman of IHS Markit and author of “The Prize,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the oil industry.
“It’s the end of an era that began with the oil crises of the 1970s,” he added.
The decade-long surge began with a spigot of new oil via hydraulic fracturing of shale deposits in the Permian Basin stretching from Texas to New Mexico and the Bakken formation running from North Dakota to Montana.
“The world has never seen growth at this scale this fast,” Yergin said. “It’s almost as though, in number of barrels, that the United States added a second Saudi Arabia within its own borders.