The strategic and economic importance for the US of US oil & gas production cannot be overemphasized. Canada is #4.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
In 2018, the US became the largest crude oil producer in the world, surpassing Russia and Saudi Arabia. The gap has widened since then, with production declining in Russia and Saudi Arabia over those years, and soaring in the US. In 2025, US production of crude oil, including lease condensate, rose to a record 13.59 million barrels per day (MM b/d), up by 172% since 2008, according to EIA data. We discussed this on March 3, along with imports and exports — that the US is a net exporter of crude oil and petroleum products, including a huge exporter of diesel, gasoline, jet fuel, and other value-added products (with charts and all).
What is new today is the EIA’s update of the production data for other countries: #2 Russia produced 9.89 MM b/d of crude oil, including lease condensate, in 2025, down by a hair from a year earlier; and #3 Saudi Arabia produced 9.56 MM b/d of crude oil, including lease condensate, up by 3.5%.
And so in 2025, the US produced 37% more than Russia and 42% more than Saudi Arabia. In terms of quantity, the US produced a record 3.70 MM b/d more than Russia and a record 4.03 MM b/d day more than Saudi Arabia.
Lease condensate is a light, high-API gravity (45° to 75°) crude oil that typically enters the crude oil stream for refining or processing. It can also be blended with heavier more viscous crude oils to facilitate pipeline transportation. Or it can be used as refinery feedstock for the production of kerosene, jet fuel, diesel, gasoline, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), light naphtha, and other products.
Further down on the world scale, to round off the top 10 producers of crude oil, including lease condensate, in 2025:
4. Canada: 5.0 MM b/d
5. Iraq: 4.4 MM b/d
6. China: 4.3 MM b/d
7. Iran: 4.1 MM b/d
8. UAE: 3.8 MM b/d
9. Brazil: 3.8 MM b/d
10. Kuwait: 2.6 MM b/d
“U.S. crude oil production has been buoyed by continued gains in drilling productivity and operational efficiency across key shale basins, which allow operators to extract more oil per well,” the EIA said in the report today.
Production in the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico rose by 4% in 2025, to 6.6 MM b/d, accounting for 48% of US production, according to the EIA. If the Permian Basin were a country, it would be the #4 producer in the world, ahead of Canada.
The strategic and economic importance of soaring US oil production – and the associated natural gas production that has made the US the largest natural gas producer in the world and the largest LNG exporter in the world – cannot be overemphasized:
It has created the strategic and economic advantages in the US of relatively cheap and reliable energy for transportation and commercial uses, as feedstock for the vast US petrochemical industry, for power generation, heating, fertilizers, and other purposes.
And it has reshuffled the global energy dynamics, which is why the closure of the Strait of Hormuz had little impact on supply in the US – though prices spiked initially due to massive speculation and due to the US market’s ties to the rest of the world via exports.
Meanwhile, the price of US benchmark grade West Texas Intermediate (WTI) has settled back down into the sweet spot for frackers at around $72 a barrel, after the brief speculative spike:
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I wonder if that means we will run out of oil sooner? after all, it’s not a renewable resource during our lifetime. ah, who cares?
The earth is awash in crude, and it’s making more every day.
Yes, BUT, the issue is two-fold; 1) accessing that oil, and 2) how fast is the oil being made relative to the rate of consumption?
Sorry DC, the details (and thermodynamics) do matter. There is a reason every oil major has pathway engineering programs that are focused on engineering phototrophic organisms to produce compounds that we normal get from oil. The earth is still a “closed system” by definition, so infinite exponential growth of humanity is impossible. The fact that we now have more people than ever believing that the planet is flat and just “magically appears” simply speaks to the lack of education and the lack of value humanity assigns to real knowledge/expertise. Humanity has been devolving for quite some time, but this is irrelevant to the laws of physics and Nature.
Hedge accordingly.
Them Dinos 🦕 waking back up?
😂
Oil isn’t from dead dino’s. It will continue to flow as long as oceans and water bodies in general exist.
Pain in your ass steve
“…during our lifetime”?
No. But it’ll get more expensive to drill. Though I’ve been saying that for over a decade, but the tech keeps getting better in leaps and bounds, and it has gotten cheaper to drill instead.
The definition of cheaper has to consider the environmental impact. Fracking has a huge cost due to ground water pollution. It’s cheaper for driller but not to people living there.
ALL forms of energy production have huge costs, nuclear being the most costly. There are NO FREE LUNCHES when it comes to energy.
But there are free appetizers: reduction in energy consumption per capita (drive less, fly less, use less, get the most energy efficient equipment, etc.) and population decline. But you cannot say that out lout because everyone gets mad at you because consumption always has to grow and the population always has to grow, for whatever reason.
So here we are, at 8.3 billion people on this planet, up from 2.6 billion when I was born. Mankind has gone nuts. And mankind needs energy. And now mankind complains about environmental degradation due to tripling of mankind in my lifetime???? You’re barking up the wrong tree. You need to tell Musk to stop fathering children! He’s got 14 already. Enough is enough.
it depends entirely on high prices so costly to produce. tech improves in leaps and bounds .sounds like propaganda.
LOL, that’s my observation based on over a decade… well actually 15 years by now almost exactly…. of following fracking and analyzing it, and writing about it and slamming it early on for its high costs back then. You never read any of it since you’re not interested in knowing anything, you’re just interested in slinging BS around. You should read some of my early articles on it. And I was right: many dozens of frackers collapsed and vanished because the price of oil collapsed far below their production costs, and they kept producing and losing money until the end. These were the two “Great American Oil Busts,” as I called them here, documented with lots of articles, and indicated in the WTI chart in this article. Go have a look. The sweet spot is now between $60 to $70 for WTI. Frackers are very profitable at that price, and that price does not cause demand destruction.
And the drilling tech has become amazing.
Once again, I’m with DC on this subject.
News to many I’m sure, but it appears the dinosaur basis of crude is not correct, but I will leave to others to explain to those who will listen about that…
Thanks again to Wolf, and in this case DC, for at least trying to explain the VAST and continuing delta between the nowadays SO out of touch MSM and reality.
Wait, you guys seriously believe in the abiotic origin? You’re not trolling?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin
It is amazing to come upon your type in the wild, I thought your kind of crank went extinct long ago.
Problem = We deplete Domestic Oil…In time, we are then dependent again in a bigger way than before. Why not let “Others” lead in production and conserve an Asset?? Strategic Thinking is required…not JUST with an eye on next quarters dividend.
Avoid creating a future problem with consequences beyond our ability to mitigate?
Wisdom. Where did it go????
Not sure if your comment on preserving oil for the future was serious because of the lack of a reason we should .
Fortunately in the USA we have individual ownership of our mineral rights and a country that still respects those ownership rights .
Telling a Permian basin landowner that we must not produce his oil under his property for his benefit for some unknown future use for generations of people he will never know makes absolutely no sense to me .
My argument is the rise of the USA oil production is a huge engine for economic growth that helped the USA rise above the GFC and has allowed us the ability to build and export the world’s most precious commodity ! Go USA go oil and gas and let the markets decide our production levels not the USA Congress or government regulations .
Individuals have an opportunity to conserve if they choose.
Live off the grid and get a few horses or better yet walk around and produce your own food but freeze in the winter and burn up in the summer and possibly die while trying to preserve the future hydrocarbons you are burning while living .
Oil and gas producers wrote off the Permain Basin decades ago as spent out. Then a long came horizontal drilling, much better downhole tooling, and better seismic. So here we are today re-drilling old formations to get out the ~80% of liquids left behind since the 1920’s (I have been in those fields).
It’s a whole new ballgame out in west Texas and eastern New Mexico.
And now we are tapping deeper formations and finding new sources in the basin. Gotta love it!
YESSIR!!
Great to hear from you on Wolf’s Wonder AA:::
Been thinking that without you, I might becoming the oldest on here, at least trying to bring some of , quite clearly, anecdotal his story to try to help the youngsters….
My friend owns land in W. Texas. They just finished putting additional
pipe line through his land. Before they were done he was notified of additional 2 lines to be installed.
Moved up his retirement date.
Wolf,
The US still uses more oil than it can currently produce and imports 7-8m barrels per day from Saudi Arabia.
Ignorant bullshit.
1. Your “uses” includes exports.
2. The last chart below shows US imports from OPEC, Saudi Arabia, and Russia 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Instead of making a fool of yourself, you could have just read the article I linked:
https://wolfstreet.com/2026/03/03/oil-jumps-but-its-not-the-1970s-anymore-us-crude-oil-production-hits-record-net-exports-soar-imports-decline-further/
Net exports (exports minus imports) surge.
Exports of crude oil and petroleum products were roughly stable in 2025 at 10.7 MMb/d and up by 495% from 2008 (red line in the chart below).
Imports declined to 7.9 MMb/d, far below the levels in the prior decades, which had peaked at nearly 13.7 MMb/d in 2005 (blue line).
In 2020, when the red line in the chart above surpassed the blue line for the first time, the US became a net exporter of crude oil and petroleum products, exporting more than importing.
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In 2025, net exports of crude oil and petroleum products rose to a record 2.8 MMb/d. In 2005, before fracking took off, the US had a deficit in net exports of 12.6 MMb/d. This is how US oil production rejiggered the global energy dynamics.
Exports of petroleum products.
Exports of petroleum products rose by 1.4% to 6.73 MMb/d, accounting for 63% of total exports. This includes 2.8 MMb/d of finished motor gasoline, distillate (such as diesel), and jet fuel.
Exports of crude oil declined by 2.9% in 2025, to 3.99 MMb/d, accounting for 37% of exports.
Even refineries in “oil island” California are in on the deal. They’re not connected via pipelines to US producing regions. California produces some of its own crude oil, and imports crude oil from Alaska and foreign countries. Some crude oil arrives by oil train across the Rockies. But it’s also a large exporter of gasoline, distillate, and jet fuel, mostly to Latin America. West Coast (PADD 5) refiners exported 0.41 MMb/d to other countries in 2025.
Importing crude oil, refining it, and exporting the value-added product is a huge profitable business for refiners in the US, which explains in part why the US imports crude oil: Refiners sell the refined products to foreign customers.
For example, the US imported 0.50 MMb/d of crude oil from Mexico in 2025 and exported 1.1 MMb/d of petroleum products (largely gasoline and diesel) to Mexico. And net exports (exports minus imports) to Mexico rose to a record 0.59 MMb/d.
Among the many petroleum products that the US exports are finished petroleum products, the largest categories of which are by export volume:
Exports of propane, ethane, butane, and natural gasoline soared by 7.0% to 3.1 MMb/d in 2025, up from near zero in 2008, an astounding export boom:
Net exports to Canada and Mexico.
Net exports to Canada were negative, but less so: US exports to Canada rose to 0.87 MMb/d in 2025. Imports from Canada fell to 4.49 MMb/d. And net exports to Canada were negative, but that deficit became smaller in 2025, 3.63 MMb/d (red line in the chart below)
Net exports to Mexico rose to record 0.59 MMb/d, as imports from Mexico fell to 0.50 MMb/d, the lowest since 1979, and exports to Mexico dipped to 1.09 MMb/d (blue).
In other words, the US has surplus with Mexico and a deficit with Canada.
Imports from Others.
Imports from Saudi Arabia declined to just 0.33 MMb/d in 2025, down from the 1.5 MMb/d range before fracking took off on a large scale (blue in the chart below).
Imports from OPEC overall fell to 1.1 MMb/d, down from the 5-6 MMb/d range in the years before fracking took off (red).
Imports from Russia dropped to zero in mid-2022 and stayed there (dotted green).
OK, after rechecking my source I admit I’m wrong.
Your charts trump my YouTube video info!
In addition to the great information you provide, my financial donation also provides great entertainment when you get all spoiled up.
Calling my comments “ignorant bullshit” and “making a fool of myself” are remarks usually only heard from my wife.
“…are remarks usually only heard from my wife.”
🤣❤️ I’m in good company 🤣
And for everyone: do yourself a favor and don’t drag YouTube BS into here. You risk getting hit by a broadside. What happens on YouTube, stays on YouTube.
That was a classic chart bombing. Shock and awe.
Apparently, Trump was onto something with his crude “drill, baby, drill” joke :)
Shows what these wars are good for. Business. “Very strategic. Beautiful actually. The most profitable wars of all wars. Probably”.
For some it is.
Yeah, but the data here is through 2025, before the Iran war.
Wait till you see the production and export data for 2026! You’ll see it right here in early March 2027 🤣
He can look at it daily :)
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_wkly_dc_NUS-Z00_mbblpd_w.htm
Good to see that the Americans are depleting their limited resources faster than anyone else.
Wait… maybe not.
Apparent those in their current administration are not rocket scientists.
Oh look!… A squirrel!
Lisa_H
Can you please explain your rationale behind depleting the resource? Sort of like the massive buildout of AI data centers and the hardware and energy requirements to power those investments should be delayed as well until an alternative to fossil fuels can be built. Just wait for SpaceX to build them in space .
Better yet let the rest of the world build them and we stop using all of our resources and start riding bikes like Denmark. 🇩🇰. A real joy to commute in the rain wind and snow !
Let us know when you do your part and sell your vehicles and start using human power and growing your own calaries for fuel . Chickens are allowed in my town just need a way of acquiring food for the chickens that does not use oil any suggestions would be appreciated.
If CA would raise their fuel tax miles driven tax and new vehicle purchase tax to the level of Denmark (approximately 100 percent tax on gas and diesel vehicles) fuel consumption might drop.
State in individual rights are promoted by the current government . Seems logical to me to keep the federal government out of local decisions.
Go Permian Basin . Go big oil and USA energy business !
I am amazed that the world is extracting a little over 100 MILLION BARRELS of crude and condensate EACH DAY. Many old oil wells have been capped as the non renewal energy source is drained almost dry. Many of the fracted wells in the US produce crude for about 6 to 7 years (less than a decade obviously). To the drilling race continues. As I understand it, most of the premium drilling areas in the Permian have already been drilled and connected to pipelines. I just don’t understand how long the US or the world can continue to extract a river of crude from the Earth. The large US production does not appear to be likely to continue for many more decades. Fracking has been the solution to declining old oil fields. For how much longer will fracking provide growing crude production….???
Yes, we’ve been hearing the same thing for years. And yet production keeps rising.
And there are shale formations that have not been tapped yet, such as the Monterey formation in California, which is gigantic. Only a small part of it is productive with current technologies. The rest is a complex mess of a formation, and is now just sitting there waiting for drilling technology to advance to the point, and for prices to advance to the point, where it’s economical to drill. That’s many years away. I wrote about the hype scandal when it erupted in 2011-2013. That was fun watching the hype blow up. The tech has advanced a lot since then, and it’s still not good enough. So the oil just sits there waiting.
There’s lots of stuff like this. Which is also why the Permian, once an old dying oil field, has exploded back on the scene: the new tech made it possible to get the oil that couldn’t be produced by older drilling technologies.
Production is one thing, proven reserves are another. One maybe gets an idea why Trump wants to control Venezuela
worldometers.info/oil/oil-reserves-by-country/
INMHO, the ”real question” is: When will ALL the subsidies for ALL the various and sundry sources of energy STOP???
While WE the People might suffer a bit in the short term, it is now very apparent that long term WE will be clearly benefitting from stopping all such subsidies, along with many other such taxpayer supported subsidies.
Time and enough to stop all but the clearly beneficial to ALL taxpayers at all levels GUVMINT support of any and all entities NOT benefitting ALL…
Going all electric cars should put a big dent in the use of crude oil, extending the depletion time. Who knows what will happen with gluts and prices.
“… about 85–90% of crude oil is ultimately used as fuels, while roughly 10–15% becomes non-fuel products like plastics, chemicals, lubricants, asphalt, and specialty materials. The non-fuel portion, though much smaller by volume, is the foundation for thousands of manufactured products used every day.”
And the production keeps increasing – in April it reached a record high:
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRFPUS2&f=M