BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 6. The US produced an average of 13.3 million barrels of crude oil per day in December 2023, Trend reports.
According to the petroleum supply report from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), this growth is due to ongoing improvements in productivity at new wells.
The country's crude oil production has been reaching record levels since 2010 and has recently increased even more rapidly, the agency noted. Surprisingly, these record highs have occurred despite a decrease in US drilling activity, mainly because the new wells are more efficient.
Since surpassing the previous record in August 2023, US crude oil production has gone up by an additional 2 percent, going beyond the pre-pandemic peak in November 2019 by 0.3 million barrels per day.
Over the past ten years, the US has seen ups and downs in the number of new wells being added each year. According to the EIA, the peak happened in 2014 with 13,745 new wells, but then there was a dip before things started picking up again around June 2016. The economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic caused a big drop in new wells in 2020, going down by almost 40 percent (4,829 wells) to 7,147.
Since then, the number of new crude oil wells has been increasing each year, but not as quickly as it did before the pandemic. In 2022, the number of new wells was the same as in 2017. In the first half of 2023, drillers added 12 percent more new wells (624 wells) compared to the same period in 2022. This growth in new wells shows that the increase in production is mainly because of improved productivity, even though there are fewer drilling rigs in operation than before.
Meanwhile, previously, the EIA predicted a drop in production at the beginning of 2024 due to some operators shutting down production amid winter weather. The administration anticipates a further decline in production throughout the second and third quarters of 2024. Looking ahead, the EIA foresees US crude oil production making a comeback in 2025, surpassing the peak recorded in November 2023 by February 2025.