U.S. Oil Output to Overtake Saudi Arabia’s by 2020
By Lananh Nguyen - Nov 12, 2012 7:24 AM ET
The U.S. met 83 percent of its energy needs in the first six months of this year, on track to be the highest annual level since 1991, according to Energy Department data.
“The IEA outlook feeds into the idea of a shift in the center of influence in the world oil market,” said Gareth Lewis-Davies, an analyst at BNP Paribas SA in London. “Given Saudi Arabia is willing to shift production up and down it will retain a large degree of influence, and remain important as a price-influencer.”
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The U.S., whose crude imports have fallen 11 percent this year, is on track to produce the most oil since 1991, according to Energy Department data. In a year when Iran has threatened to halt oil shipments through the Persian Gulf, the growing output, coupled with a gas-production boom, may help insulate the nation from supply disruptions. President George W. Bush said in his 2006 State of the Union address that the U.S. needed to break its “addiction” to foreign oil. Oil Prices
West Texas Intermediate crude, the benchmark U.S. grade, has dropped about 13 percent this year to $85.88 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, as stockpiles swelled to a 22-year high. Prices have more than quadrupled in the past decade, reaching as high as $147.27 a barrel in July 2008.Global demand for oil is projected to rise to 99.7 million barrels a day in 2035, up from 87.4 million last year, according to IEA, which advises industrialized nations including the U.S., Germany and Japan. Today’s report projects trends to 2035.
Saudi Arabia pumped 9.8 million barrels of oil a day last month, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. U.S. output was 6.7 million barrels a day in the week ended Nov. 2, according to the Energy Department.
The U.S. will pump 11.1 million barrels of oil a day in 2020 and 10.9 million in 2025, the IEA said. Those figures are 500,000 barrels a day and 100,000 barrels a day higher, respectively, than its forecasts for Saudi Arabia for those years. The desert kingdom becomes the biggest producer again by 2030, pumping 11.4 million barrels a day versus 10.2 million in the U.S.
Overtaking Saudi Arabia
“Around 2017, the U.S. will be the largest oil producer of the world, overtaking Saudi Arabia,” IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol said at a press conference in London today. “This is of course a major development and definitely will have significant implications.”An oil ministry official based in the Saudi capital Riyadh wasn’t immediately available to comment on the report when contacted by Bloomberg by phone today.
The IEA report described the U.S.’s advancement toward energy self-sufficiency as “a dramatic reversal of the trend seen in most other energy-importing countries.” The country is developing so-called tight oil reserves including the Bakken shale formation, which are extracted by hydraulic fracturing or horizontal drilling.
Iran Ban
The European Union banned oil imports from Iran in July over the nation’s nuclear program, reducing shipments from a country that was until then the second-biggest producer in OPEC.The IEA’s members will probably pay about $125 a barrel for imported oil by 2035, compared with Brent crude prices near $109 today on London’s ICE Futures Europe exchange. The North Sea grade peaked at a record $147.50 a barrel in July 2008 before tumbling to about $46 that December, and has gained in each of the three years since then.
Efforts by global policy makers to promote energy efficiency are “disappointingly slow” and falling short of their economic potential, the agency said. Increased energy- saving measures could cut worldwide oil demand by almost 13 million barrels a day by 2035, or the current combined output of Russia and Norway. Put another way, were efficiency measures suggested by the IEA enacted in full, the increase in world energy demand over the period would be cut in half.
Natural Gas
Natural gas consumption will rise in the forecast period, driven by China, India and the Middle East.“In the United States, low prices and abundant supply see gas overtake oil around 2030 to become the largest fuel in the energy mix,” according to the report, written by a team of researchers led by Birol.
Iraq will be the biggest contributor to new oil supplies, raising production to 6 million barrels a day by 2020. By 2035, the nation’s output rate will rise to more than 8 million, overtaking Russia to become the world’s second-largest exporter, the IEA said. The country pumped 3.4 million barrels a day last month, making it the second-largest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, after Saudi Arabia, according to Bloomberg estimates.
The forecasts for Iraq, a special focus of this year’s IEA outlook, were previously published on Oct. 9.
In emerging nations, government subsidies will continue to spur the use of fossil fuels, even as lower-carbon energy sources become more popular. State subsidies cost $523 billion last year, up almost 30 percent from 2010. Subsidy programs, which remain most prevalent in the Middle East and North Africa, have become more expensive because of higher oil prices, the agency said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Lananh Nguyen in London at lnguyen35@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephen Voss at sev@bloomberg.net
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