EIA Says US Will Set Oil Record Next Year

2017 has already been a banner year for American oil production. U.S. shale producers have gotten their feet underneath them once again, adapting to the low oil price environment by cutting costs and improving efficiencies en route to turning a profit at $50 crude, and we’ve seen output surge accordingly. Since last October, U.S. oil production has increased more than 900,000 barrels per day, but according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the party’s just getting started—it expects American producers to break a 47 year old record for production in 2018. The EIA reports:

In EIA’s latest Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), total U.S. crude oil production is forecast to average 9.3 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2017, up 0.5 million b/d from 2016. In 2018, EIA expects crude oil production to reach an average of 9.9 million b/d, which would surpass the previous record of 9.6 million b/d set in 1970. EIA forecasts that most of the growth in U.S. crude oil production through the end of 2018 will come from tight rock formations within the Permian region in Texas and from the Federal Gulf of Mexico.

The United States is already the world’s biggest producer of oil and gas, thanks to a recent surge in production of hydrocarbons trapped in shale. Fracking has catapulted the U.S. to the front of the energy producing pack, so to speak, and now it’s going to hurtle us past another important milestone, into uncharted territory.

Policymakers and the public are both still playing catch-up to this extraordinary transformation. For decades, the U.S. energy debate was framed in terms of scarcity, as the legacy of the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s loomed large in American minds. We’ve moved far, far beyond that, as next year’s projected milestone shows, into a new era of energy abundance.

And just as we once transitioned from a discussion of achieving energy “independence” (a farcical idea) to shoring up energy “security,” we might now shift again to discussing how to achieve American energy “dominance,” as the Trump Administration has described it. Thanks to the shale boom, that doesn’t seem so far fetched an idea.

The post EIA Says US Will Set Oil Record Next Year appeared first on The American Interest.