Average annual crude production in the US Gulf fell by 245,000 B/D, or 13%, to 1.65 million B/D. The EIA highlighted that the biggest regional drop came from the US Gulf of Mexico where multiple tropical storms and hurricanes forced mass shut-ins and platform evacuations. The historic decline in output can’t be all blamed on the pandemic and low prices. It is playing big time into the latest estimates on crude prices from the world’s biggest investment banks, many of which consider bounces of $5–$10/bbl likely in the short term. This followed a 100-year snowstorm that drove widespread power outages and well freeze-offs across Texas and Oklahoma.Īverage output will eventually reach 11.1 million B/D for the year, the EIA projects, before possibly hitting 12 million B/D next year.įor now, though, the US slump is not being taken for granted. The EIA estimates that in the last week of February, US oil production was back down to 10 million B/D.

By May, output was down to 10 million B/D, the lowest monthly average of 2020.In January 2020, US crude was flowing at a peak rate of 12.8 million B/D.The numbers reveal the contrast between the pre-pandemic trajectory and that of the course altered by the virus' spread and a price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia in March: This is according to new figures released Tuesday by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) which said the 8% drop in 2020 represents the largest year-over-year decline in records that stretch back to the 1850s.

Then a global pandemic put the world economy on pause and sent output tumbling down to an annual average of 11.3 million B/D.

In 2019, US oil production hit a record-high average of 12.2 million B/D.

2019 oil production by country