By next year, the US will become the world’s largest oil producer thanks to the fracking boom. Perhaps the US outdid the current Primus Russia earlier this year, said International Energy Agency (IEA) chief Fatih Birol: “The growth of US shale oil is strong and the pace is very high – the US will soon become the world’s largest oil producer.”
At the end of 2017, US oil production rose to over ten million barrels a day (bpd). As a result, the USA production passed that of Saudi Arabia, which has been the world’s largest exporter of oil. It appears that US oil production will continue to expand going into 2020 before we see a correction thereafter. There is no doubt that the US has significantly changed the global oil market. This has placed tremendous pressure on Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) to reduce its production in an effort to stabilize the market price of oil. Opec and other leading producers have agreed on a decline in production since the beginning of 2017. Oil prices have since increased.