U.S. oil production may rise to as much as 14 million barrels of oil per day (bpd) by 2020, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke told Fox Business on Wednesday.
"Today we are the largest oil and gas producer on the face of the planet, rolling through 11.2 million bpd, on our way to 14," Secretary Zinke said.
There are some hurdles, we have to get the infrastructure, but the production side of it is well within the capability of going to 14 million bpd, he added.
In its October Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said that U.S. crude oil production averaged 11.1 million bpd in September, up slightly from the oil production in August. The EIA expects U.S. crude oil production to average 10.7 million bpd this year, rising from 9.4 million bpd in 2017. U.S. oil production will average 11.8 million bpd in 2019, EIA's latest estimate shows.
U.S. production is and will continue to be driven by the shale patch, most notably the Permian, although takeaway capacity constraints are slowing down the growth and widening the differential of WTI to Brent.
The seven key shale regions are expected to boost their oil production in November by 98,000 bpd from October to a combined 7.714 million bpd, with the Permian alone adding 53,000 bpd of production next month compared to this month, the EIA forecasts. Related: The Dark Horse Of The Oil Price Rally
For exports, U.S. crude oil exports could increase to 3.9 million bpd by 2020, up from just above 2 million bpd now, mostly driven by rising production in the Permian, the Houston Chronicle reported earlier this month, citing a report by S&P Global Platts.
However, the Permian production has already outpaced pipeline takeaway capacity capable of transporting the crude oil to the Texas Gulf Coast. Midstream operators have planned and continue to announce plans for more oil pipeline projects in the area to ship oil from the Permian to the Gulf Coast. But many of those pipelines will not come on stream before late in 2019 and 2020, creating bottlenecks in the flow of the rising oil production to the Gulf Coast for exports.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More
Comments
Thule greenland tommorow -23/-9 °C and New York nights freezing so oil must be real buyable in winter not summer time already.
Oil was payed also with bankrupcy before alone 19 billion $ australia BHP Biliton loss.
VW etc. did pay only for fraud katalysator since nothing true of CO2 and NOx danger same BP for oil accident usa coast not paying after wanted risk, control taking and usa profit with oil and mistake not closing with bombing in 24h sending sea hawks.
Nonsense not having new zero risk and cheap RBN Th pebble bed HTR and Li-7 Th HTR and new turbines efficiency near 100%
paying only heaven cities in gulf countries for worthless oil with enough nuclear power also for 700bar CNG out of water & air CO2.
Only +2ppm/a means 200 not 20 years until doubled with +2°effect so all actions wrong
same installing israel after over 3000 years again with spreading of local tribe conflict.
Judaism, Islam & christianity from levante.
NOx most not from cars but blizzards etc.
Still, an MIT study published in December 2017 reached the conclusion that the US vastly overstates oil production forecasts and that the EIA has been exaggerating the effect of fracking technology on well productivity. According to this study, the EIA’s weekly forecasts could very well be overstating US oil production between 700,000 barrels a day (b/d) and 1 mbd.
While the US is the world’s largest producer of natural gas, it is not the world’s largest crude oil producer. Russia’s oil production is 11.32 mbd compared to 11 mbd for the United States though the EIA expects US production to average 10.7 mbd in 2018.
According to the 2018 OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin, the United States produced 9.355 mbd in 2017, consumed 19.917 mbd thus necessitating imports of 10.452 mbd. But since the US exported in 2017 some 1.118 mbd, this meant that net US crude oil imports in that year amounted to 9.334 mbd.
By 2020, projected US consumption and production could reach 20.52 mbd and 11.00 mbd respectively. This will necessitate imports of 9.52 mbd. Consequently, the US could not expect to export 3.9 mbd of its extra-light tight oil by 2020 without importing an equivalent amount of heavy and medium crudes suitable for use in US refineries.
Dr Mamdouh G Salameh
International Oil Economist
Visiting Professor of Energy Economics at ESCP Europe Business School, London