The oil and condensate production in the US has reached its maximum during 44 years, because of development of shale resources. The Financial Times writes that the production kept going down during 40 years, but only five years of growth was needed to break this tendency.
In April 2014 US extracted in average 11.27 million barrels of oil and condensate a day, which is close to the average annual production of the 1970s – 11.3 million barrels a day, which is a peak for the country. Now the production has exceeded this peak.
The structure of hydrocarbon resources production has significantly changed since the 1970s – the share of liquid gas condensate with lower energy potential and lower price, than oil, is significantly higher. In April 2014 oil production totaled 8.3 million barrels a day and was significantly behind the record 10 million barrels a day in November 1970.
The Energy Information Agency of the US Department of Energy expects growth of oil and condensate production till 2020, after which it will start going down.
The Kepler Chevreux analyst Marc Lewis said that the most attractive fields in the US were developed first and shale oil extraction from old fields goes down fast, which calls into question growth of production in the future.
