Rising U.S. shale oil and gas production has turned the United States into the world's largest oil and gas producer, which in turn has changed the entire energy landscape both in America and abroad, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Friday.
The shale revolution and the ensuing surge in oil and gas production has transformed U.S. energy policy from a mindset of scarcity to an approach seeking to maximize the growing production by increasing exports and developing new technologies, the IEA said in its latest in-depth review of U.S. energy policies.
"Since the last in-depth review five years ago, the United States has reshaped energy markets both domestically and around the world," the IEA's Executive Director, Fatih Birol, said at the presentation of the report on Friday, accompanied by U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry.
"In this context, the IEA commends the lifting of the US ban on crude oil exports as well as efforts to streamline regulatory approvals for LNG exports, which have helped bolster global energy security by diversifying supply options for importers," Birol said.
U.S. crude oil exports have soared since the ban was lifted at the end of 2015, to reach 3.159 million bpd on average in June 2019, according to the latest available EIA crude export data.
The United States briefly overtook Saudi Arabia as the world's number one gross oil exporter at one point in June this year, the IEA said yesterday.
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The Paris-based agency sees U.S. shale increasingly dominating the oil market over the next half-decade at least.
The EIA's estimates from last month showed that petroleum and natural gas production in the United States jumped by 16 percent and 12 percent, respectively, in 2018, setting new production records and placing the United States as the world's single largest producer of oil and natural gas.
The U.S. had already surpassed Russia as the world's biggest natural gas producer back in 2011. Last year, the United States beat Saudi Arabia to become the single largest petroleum producer, the EIA said in August, noting that "Last year's increase in the United States was one of the largest absolute petroleum and natural gas production increases from a single country in history."
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
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Comments
After the financial system collapses, humans will still need food an energy.
For those couple more decades of the Petroleum Age, the world can thank the, 'father of fracking', the late, George P. Mitchell, who worked for decades finding a way to get oil and gas out of shale.