US oil output grows to historic rate of 12 million barrels per day

U.S. oil production topped 12 million barrels per day in April, marking a new record for the nation’s crude output.

A government report released Friday indicated that production had soared 2.1 percent in April, the most recent month of data, to a total of 12.16 million barrels a day, Bloomberg News reported.

{mosads}The total output now surpasses key competitors in the energy industry including Russia and Saudi Arabia, the latter of which in particular has seen oil production and exports drop due to increased political tensions in the region. The U.S. has been the world’s top crude oil producer since last year.

The report also indicated that oil production in western Texas’s Permian basin is expected to rise 50 percent by 2025, which could help the U.S. to sustain such record production numbers.

“It really means that OPEC has to make a decision to balance the market or shale will do it for them,” Jim Lucier, managing director of Washington, D.C.-based Capital Alpha Partners LLC, told the outlet. “Despite all the talk about Wall Street forcing capital discipline, we’re not seeing any diminishing production yet.”

The Trump administration has made increased oil production a focus of its energy policy, and the president declared in his annual State of the Union address earlier this year that his administration had “unleashed a revolution in American energy.”