While the United States has been the world’s biggest consumer of oil for decades, it became the largest oil producer, too, back in 2018, and has retained that crown ever since.
The shale revolution and the growth in the Permian oil production have allowed the U.S. not only to retain the top spot ahead of Russia and Saudi Arabia, but to extend the lead over these OPEC+ allies, whose output has been restrained by the voluntary production cuts in recent years.
This year, the U.S. has been expanding the gap further despite the modest growth (so far) in shale production, while Saudi Arabia and Russia have been held back by the Iran war and the Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian energy assets, respectively.
The U.S. domestic oil demand recovered in 2025, close to its pre-COVID level and near the 2018 peak, according to the Statistical Review of World Energy 2026, published by the Energy Institute.
At the same time, crude oil and condensate production in the United States averaged 13.586 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2025, rising by 2.7% from the previous year and accounting for 15.8% of the total global production.
To compare, Russia’s crude plus condensate production averaged 10.161 million bpd last year, down by 0.6% annually for an 11.8% share of the global total.
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Saudi Arabia, for its part, saw its crude oil and condensate production at 9.727 million bpd, a 5.7% annual increase, as OPEC+ last year moved to materially ease its previous production cuts. Still, Saudi oil output was lower than Russia’s and accounted for 11.3% of the world’s crude oil and condensate production, according to data in the latest Statistical Review of World Energy.
Last year, the U.S. extended its lead over Russia and Saudi Arabia in terms of crude oil and condensate production. America produced a record-high average of 13.6 million bpd in 2025, shattering the previous production record of 13.2 million bpd set for the previous year, data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) showed this month.
U.S. crude oil production was about 40% higher on average in 2025 than that from the next two largest global crude oil producers, Russia and Saudi Arabia, said the EIA.
The United States remained the world’s largest crude oil producer in 2025, according to the EIA’s International Energy Statistics database, extending a streak that began in 2018 when the U.S. overtook Russia to become the world’s leading producer.
Over the past decade and a half, the shale boom and continued gains in drilling productivity and operational efficiency have helped the U.S. reverse a multi-decade decline in its crude oil production. This happened in 2008.
A decade later, the U.S. toppled Russia and Saudi Arabia in 2018 to become the single biggest producer of crude oil.
“U.S. crude oil production powered by shale development has turned the United States into not just the world’s largest producer, but the largest producer of crude oil ever,” the EIA said.
Despite relatively weak West Texas Intermediate (WTI) prices in 2025, when they averaged $65 per barrel, U.S. crude oil output continued to grow last year, with the Permian output rising by 4% to 6.6 million bpd, per the EIA data.
The Permian accounted for about 48% of U.S. crude oil production in 2025.
This year will see further growth in Permian and overall U.S. crude output, amid higher prices due to the U.S.-Iran war.
As of July 9, the EIA forecast that U.S. crude oil production will remain near 13.7 million bpd in 2026, before increasing to above 14 million bpd next year.
Amid the Middle East crisis, the U.S. has also raised its crude oil and total petroleum exports to record-highs in recent months.
The latest available EIA data showed a 15% jump in U.S. petroleum exports in April, compared to March, which marked the previous record, as the Strait of Hormuz crisis boosted demand for American crude and fuels.
Crude oil exports made up the largest share of total U.S. petroleum exports, averaging 5.6 million bpd in April, or 21% more than the previous record set in December 2023.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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