The U.S. has taken Russia’s crown as the world’s biggest oil and natural gas producer, illustrating the seismic shifts in the global energy landscape caused by America’s shale fields.
U.S. oil production rose to an all-time high last year, gaining 1.6 million barrels a day (MMbbl/d), according to BP Plc’s Statistical Review of World Energy released on Wednesday. Gas output also rose, putting America ahead of Russia as a producer of the hydrocarbons combined.
The data showing the U.S.’s emergence as the world’s top driller confirms a trend that’s helped the world’s largest economy slash imports, caused a slump in global energy prices and shifted the country’s foreign policy priorities.
“We are truly witnessing a changing of the guard of global energy suppliers,” BP’s Chief Economist Spencer Dale said in a presentation. “The implications of the shale revolution for the U.S. are profound.”
The other major shift in at the BP report is China’s energy consumption growing at the slowest pace since the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s as the economy slows and the country tries to lessen its reliance on heavy industry.
“Growth in some of China’s most energy-intensive sectors, such as steel, iron and cement—which had thrived during China’s rapid industrialization—virtually collapsed in 2014,” said Dale, a former Bank of England policy maker who joined BP last year.
Economic Change
In the U.S., the boom in oil and gas production has started to change the economy profoundly. Cheap fuel has seen manufacturing return to the U.S. as the country produced about 90% of the energy it consumed last year.
Last year, imports equaled 1% of GDP, according to BP’s data. In 2007, just before the financial crisis, U.S. energy imports accounted for about half of the current account deficit of 5% of GDP.
Shale drillers from ExxonMobil Corp. to Chesapeake Energy Corp. spent about $120 billion last year in the U.S., more than double the amount five years earlier.
The U.S. increase in oil production last year, helping it to overtake Saudi Arabia as a crude producer, was the first time a country has raised production by at least 1 MMbbl/d for three consecutive years, BP said.
Among other producers outside the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Canada and Brazil also posted record production last year, prompting OPEC’s policy shift of ditching price support for defending market share.
On the demand side, countries outside the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development accounted for all of the net growth in global consumption of 0.8 MMbbl/d, or 0.8%, last year, BP said. Chinese consumption growth, though slower, still increased 390,000 bbl/d, the biggest increase in the world.
Oil consumption in developed nations dropped 1.2%, the eighth decrease in the past nine years. World natural gas consumption grew 0.4% last year, compared with the 10-year average of 2.4%.
The world’s coal use also increased 0.4%, slower than the 10-year average annual growth of 2.9%, with consumption in China almost slowing as the nation seeks to cut pollution and use more gas for power generation. Coal’s share of primary energy consumption fell to 30%.
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