U.S. crude oil production fell in December to an average of 11.063 million barrels a day, according to the latest monthly report from the Energy Information Administration.
U.S. crude oil production fell by an average of 58,000 barrels a day, the EIA said on Friday.
US production of the most prolific PADD, PADD 3, remained the same in December at 7.611 million barrels per day. This includes production from Texas and federal offshore production PADD 3, as well as from New Mexico, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas and Alabama.
The second most prolific crude oil PADD, PADD 2, fell from 1.828 million bpd in November to 1.782 million bpd in December. This includes producers like North Dakota and Oklahoma.
But production losses probably didn’t stop in December.
Although December is the last full month for which there is actual data, the EIA also estimates weekly crude oil production, and these estimates are below the 11.063 million bpd that the United States saw in December.
For a perspective of how steep the drop is, average production in December 2019 was over 12.8 million barrels per day, according to EIA data.
For January, the EIA estimated that a few weeks fell to 10.9 million barrels a day. And the most recent EIA production estimates for the week ending February 19 fix total US oil production at an average of just 9.7 million bpd.
This dramatic drop in oil production the previous week is probably courtesy of the Texas Freeze, when the refinery and crude oil production had to be reduced due to freezing temperatures that cut the power of millions of residents in the state.
The EIA estimates that U.S. oil production will not exceed the levels seen in 2020 until 2022.
By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com
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