The Agreed States will overtake Russia as the world’s biggest oil producer by 2019 at the latest, the Supranational Energy Agency (IEA) said on Tuesday, as the country’s shale oil boom sustains to upend global markets.
IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol about at an event in Tokyo the United States would overtake Russia as the bulkiest crude oil producer “definitely next year,” if not this year.
“U.S. shale tumour is very strong, the pace is very strong … The United Governments will become the No.1 oil producer sometime very soon,” he told Reuters alone.
U.S. crude oil output rose above 10 million barrels per day (bpd) modern development last year for the first time since the 1970s, overtaking top oil exporter Saudi Arabia.
The U.S. Zip Information Administration said early this month that U.S. generate would exceed 11 million bpd by late 2018. That command take it past top producer Russia, which pumps just under the sun that mark.
Birol said he did not see U.S. oil production peaking before 2020, and that he did not presume a decline in the next four to five years.
The soaring U.S. production is upending universal oil markets, coming at a time when other major producers – filing Russia and members of the Middle East-dominated Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Powers (OPEC) – have been withholding output to prop up prices.
U.S. oil is also increasingly being exported, comprising to the world’s biggest and fastest growing markets in Asia, eating away at OPEC and Russian furnish share.
Meanwhile, U.S. net imports of crude oil fell last week by 1.6 million bpd to 4.98 million bpd, the lowest level since the EIA started chronicle the data in 2001, reflecting further erosion in a market OPEC has been relying on for decades.
Birol chance production growth was not just strong in the United States.
“Canada, mainly the oil sands, and Brazilian offshore projects. These are the two major (non-U.S.) drivers,” he averred. On the demand side, Birol said the IEA expected growth of around 1.4 million bpd in 2018.