Oil production in the U.S. is projected to reach a record level of 10 million barrels per day (bpd) before the end of this year, New York-based independent oil and gas consulting services and business intelligence data firm Rystad Energy said Wednesday.
The historic all-time record of 10 million bpd of domestic production was last reached in November 1970 when crude prices were below $3 per barrel, the company said.
After the shale revolution in 2008, the U.S.' oil output hit as high as 9.6 million bpd in April 2015.
With oversupply and low global demand, however, oil prices began plummeting in mid-2014. This saw domestic output dropping to as low as 8.4 million bpd in July 2016.
Rystad Energy said it forecasts current U.S. production "bouncing back twice as fast as it dropped" to reach a level of 9.4 million bpd for May.
"This very steep growth comes with U.S. oil prices locked below the price most analysts estimated as a minimum to grow U.S. oil production," the company said in a statement.
"The U.S oil production has grown faster at $50 a barrel than any analysts in the market predicted," Bjornar Tonhaugen, VP of Oil Markets at Rystad Energy, said in the statement.
"As these numbers are getting confirmed, the initial optimism about OPEC’s temporary cuts, may turn to increasing skepticism about OPEC’s choice of policy once the current output deal expires next year," he added.
On the other hand, the U.S.' Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts crude oil production in the country to average 9.3 million bpd this year, and 10 million bpd in 2018, according to its Short-Term Energy Outlook report for May.
(Anadolu Agency)
