2025-12-17 17:28:00
In November, the US Energy Information Administration estimated domestic crude oil production at 13.862 million barrels per day.
Not everyone believes it.
Today the Dallas Fed released its latest survey of energy executives. It’s an anonymous survey so we don’t know who said what but this comment turned some heads:
There is no way that the U.S oil production data is correct
The thing is, US production keeps on going up as drilling completions and oil prices keep going down. Maybe that’s just a lagged effect or a result of longer laterals but there is some skepticism, particularly in the 400k bpd added since April and the Liberation Day drop in crude prices (that was broke this week).
It’s highly unlikely that the US has fudged oil production numbers but if there was some kind of mistake it would be a gamechanger. For some perspective, the 400k bpd increase alone would be the equivalent of all the oil taken offline in a Venezuela embargo. It would also materially decrease, if not eliminate the oil surplus forecast for 2026.
It would also go some way to explain why oil prices have been so resilient this year despite huge OPEC production increases. We touched a five-year low this week but prices have been largely stuck in the $55-60 range for awhile.
In any case, changes are coming to the oil market as some of the other comments in the Dallas Fed survey highlight:
- Decreasing oil prices are making many of our firm’s wells noneconomic.
- if economic conditions worsen, drilling and completion activities will cease in 2026.
- Our company now runs one drilling rig, compared to three rigs earlier in 2025. Our projected drilling schedule for the next several years contemplates one drilling rig of activity
- My belief is that the administration is coordinating with Saudi Arabia to either talk about or add additional barrels to the market, which could create leverage over Russian negotiations and also suppress oil price inflationary impacts through the upcoming 2026 midterm election
- Clients are concerned about a potentially large oil glut in first and second quarters of 2026
- I believe the glut in the global oil market is overstated and, if applicable, temporary. In any event, if the number of wells drilled declines to any significant degree as some commentators suggest, there will not be a glut, and [there] likely [will be] a decline in U.S. oil production given the obvious rate of depletion of existing wells.
