Could the USA Lose Its Reign as the World’s #1 Petroleum Producer?

In 2015, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) confirmed that America was the top dog when it came to producing petroleum and natural gas hydrocarbons. While the numbers may check out, the EIA’s latest Weekly Petroleum status report has revealed that Russia and Saudi Arabia are closing in on the United States.

U.S. production of crude oil is falling, yet both Russia and Saudi Arabia are increasing their output. So while the States may step up as the world’s biggest total petroleum producer, it only churned out 8.76 million barrels of crude oil per day in the week ending May 20 2016. This is markedly lower than the 9.4 million barrels a day it produced in 2015. In comparison, Saudi Aramco’s 2015 annual review reports that the desert country produced 10.2 million barrels of crude oil per day in 2016, while in 2015, Russia was churning out the same amount.

The USA drops is crude game

So what’s caused the USA to drop the ball when it comes to crude? Primarily, the decline is due to the U.S. refocussing its attention on shale. Furthermore, the global drop in crude prices that saw oil fall to US$27.10 per barrel has seen 77 North American oil companies declare bankruptcy. And with prices yet to stabilise, there could be even more closures on the horizon.

Russians and Saudis trump USA crude production

Ultimately, while the U.S. may be the world’s largest petroleum and natural gas producer, Saudi Arabia and Russia remain formidable players when it comes to the crude oil industry. Some analysts assert that America’s lofty title is ‘meaningless,’ and that when the finer numbers are crunched, the Saudis and the Russians come out on top.  

As well as being subject to fluctuating market prices, the production of crude itself is also a complex process. ‘Oil flow assurance issues: tetraacids in deposits and crude oils’ explores a major issue faced by the industry, and how the development of a sequential solid phase extraction (SPE) and derivatisation method is allowing producers to remove matrix interferences and detect tetraacids using a combination of liquid chromatography and electrospray ionisation-mass spectrometry. The article spotlights the distribution of tetraacids, and how insight assists in making deductions about a host of important petroleum parameters. The technology also allows researchers to identify the elemental composition of unknowns that are often encountered when analysing the tetraacid content of crude oils.