In 2017, the United States’ oil export reached 1,1 million barrels on average, which is almost twice as much as exported in 2016. These figures are confirmed by the EIA.
Apparently, Barack Obama’s decision to cancel the oil export embargo in 2015 has been contributing to this oil export growth. It’s interesting to note that in 2017, the number of outlets for the US oil exports increased from 27 all the way to 37 countries all over the world. Canada still remained the key outlet but its share in the USA’s overall oil export dropped from 61% all the way down to just 29%. China, which is the second-biggest importer of American oil, increased its share up to 20%. The UK and the Netherlands come third and forth with 9% and 8% respectively. As for the new buyers of American oil, India took the lead last year with 22K barrels a day by sharing the 10th place with Spain .
it’s also interesting to note, that the export of crude oil increased its share in the overall U.S. export up to 19%, which is much higher than the previous record of 13% seen in 1999. In absolute figures, the record is even more impressing – 6,3 million barrels a day in 2017 against 1 million barrels a day in 1999.
The U.S. crude oil production increased by 500K b/d up to 9,3 million b/d on average in 2017. According to the recent EIA report released in March, this year the average daily production of crude oil in the United States may increase by a stunning 1,4 million barrels.
The bottom line is, American oil companies seem to be outperforming their production and export plans for the year. According the International Energy Agency (IEA), February’s daily global supply of crude oil turned out to be 740K barrels higher than in February 2016, mostly because of the bigger oil export coming from the United States. It seems that American oilers have been reducing to nothing all the efforts made by the OPEC+ since the global commercial oil inventories increased in February for the first time since July 2017. They increased by 18 million all the way up to 2,871 billion barrels.
