United States

The Short Version, With Numbers

The United States produced 13.66 million barrels per day (b/d) of crude oil in 2025, the highest annual average in its history, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration's annual production series (checked October 2026). The EIA's October 6, 2026 Short-Term Energy Outlook forecasts 13.9 million b/d for 2026 and 14.3 million b/d for 2027. The country also produced about 107.6 billion cubic feet per day of dry natural gas in 2025 (PetroEyes conversion of EIA's annual total of 39.29 trillion cubic feet).

Three facts sit underneath that headline and matter more for anyone reading the data closely. Growth is concentrated in one corner of one basin. Refining capacity is shrinking even as crude output rises. And the government's emergency stockpile has been drawn to a level last seen decades ago. Each is covered below with the EIA tables that show it.

Fifty-Five Years of Output in One Table

Year	Crude production (thousand b/d)	What was happening
1970	9,637	Peak of the conventional era
1985	8,971	Still near 9 million b/d
2000	5,822	Long decline of mature onshore fields
2008	5,000	The low point
2010	5,484	Horizontal drilling in tight oil starts to show
2014	8,781	First shale boom, before the price collapse
2016	8,859	Output dips after the 2014-15 price fall
2019	12,335	Pre-pandemic record
2020	11,349	Pandemic shut-ins
2023	12,972	New record
2024	13,267	New record
2025	13,662	New record

Source: EIA, U.S. field production of crude oil, annual (checked October 2026). The descriptive column is PetroEyes context.

The 1970 figure is the reason "peak oil" was a common forecast for the United States through the 2000s. Output fell by about half between 1970 and 2008, then rose by 8.66 million b/d between 2008 and 2025, a 173% increase. Most of that came from horizontal wells completed with multi-stage hydraulic fracturing in low-permeability rock, usually called tight oil or shale.

The two dips in the table, 2016 and 2020, are useful reminders that this supply responds to price. Shale wells decline quickly, so when operators stop drilling, national output falls within months. That short-cycle behaviour is the main difference between U.S. supply and the long-lived oil sands projects described on our Canada page.

Where the Barrels Come From: State and Offshore Data

Region	2023 (thousand b/d)	2024	2025	Change 2023 to 2025
Texas	5,501	5,674	5,761	+260
New Mexico	1,842	2,034	2,205	+363
Federal offshore Gulf (PADD 3)	1,865	1,792	1,942	+77
North Dakota	1,193	1,198	1,171	-22
Colorado	460	472	475	+15
Alaska	427	422	422	-5
Oklahoma	430	400	404	-26
United States	12,972	13,267	13,662	+690

Source: EIA, crude oil production by state, annual (checked October 2026). The change column is PetroEyes arithmetic.

The insight in the state table

U.S. output rose by 690,000 b/d between 2023 and 2025. New Mexico supplied 363,000 b/d of that, about 53%, from a state that produces about one-sixth of national crude. Texas added 260,000 b/d, about 38%. The rest of the country, taken together, added roughly 67,000 b/d, with North Dakota and Oklahoma declining.

Most of New Mexico's oil comes from the Delaware Basin, the western half of the Permian. Texas also produces from the Permian, as well as the Eagle Ford and older fields. So the national growth story in 2024 and 2025 is overwhelmingly a Permian story, and within the Permian, increasingly a New Mexico story. Texas and New Mexico together accounted for 7.97 million b/d in 2025, or 58% of national crude production. Our Permian Basin production outlook and Permian rig count and WTI spread analysis follow that basin in detail.

The North Dakota line shows the opposite case. The Bakken has been roughly flat at about 1.2 million b/d for three years and slipped in 2025. A flat or falling mature play is normal for shale; the national total rises only when a basin like the Delaware has enough remaining high-quality drilling locations to outpace declines elsewhere.

The federal offshore Gulf, at 1.94 million b/d in 2025, is the second-largest producing region after Texas. Offshore projects take years to build but decline more slowly once online, which makes them a steadier base under the more volatile onshore total.

Reserves: What "46 Billion Barrels" Means

The EIA's proved reserves report, released April 7, 2026, put U.S. crude oil and lease condensate proved reserves at 46.0 billion barrels at the end of 2024, down 1% from 46.4 billion barrels a year earlier (checked October 2026). Texas had the largest net decline, 529 million barrels (down 3%), New Mexico the largest net increase, 496 million barrels (up 8%), and North Dakota the second-largest decline, 487 million barrels (down 11%). Natural gas proved reserves fell 3% to 583.9 trillion cubic feet.

Worked example: the reserves-to-production ratio

Dividing reserves by annual output gives a rough "years of supply" figure:

46.0 billion barrels ÷ (13.27 million b/d × 366 days in 2024) = 46.0 ÷ 4.86 billion barrels per year = about 9.5 years.

That number is often misread as a forecast that the United States will run out of oil in a decade. It is not. Proved reserves are the volumes companies can show are economically recoverable from known reservoirs under current prices and technology. They are replenished each year by extensions, discoveries, and revisions as drilling moves into new acreage. U.S. reserves-to-production ratios have stayed in a similar range for decades while production rose. What the ratio does show is that U.S. supply depends on continuous drilling, unlike countries whose reserves are booked decades ahead. Our news analysis of the reserves-to-production ratio by country compares this figure internationally.

Refining: 130 Plants and Falling Capacity

Operable U.S. atmospheric crude distillation capacity was 18.2 million barrels per calendar day (b/cd) at 130 refineries on January 1, 2026, down more than 250,000 b/cd (about 1%) from a year earlier, according to the EIA's Refinery Capacity Report analysis published June 29, 2026 (checked October 2026).

Change in 2025	Capacity (b/cd)	Region	Timing
LyondellBasell Houston closure	263,776	Gulf Coast (PADD 3), about 3% of regional capacity	Operations ended March 2025
Phillips 66 Los Angeles closure	138,700	West Coast (PADD 5), about 5% of regional capacity	Operations ceased October 2025
Valero Benicia	145,000	West Coast (PADD 5)	Still counted on January 1, 2026; removed from EIA monthly estimates in March 2026

Source: EIA, June 29, 2026.

The largest U.S. refinery on a calendar-day basis is Motiva's Port Arthur plant at 656,000 b/cd; on a stream-day basis it is Marathon's Galveston Bay refinery at 678,000 barrels per stream day. The EIA notes that stream-day capacity is typically about 6% above calendar-day capacity, because it measures what a plant can run on a good day rather than averaged over downtime.

Reading the Gulf Coast share

The EIA sized the Houston closure at about 3% of Gulf Coast capacity. Working backwards, 263,776 ÷ 0.03 implies a regional base of roughly 8.8 million b/cd, close to half of the 18.2 million national total. That rough calculation explains why Gulf Coast refinery outages move national product prices so quickly, and why West Coast closures have an outsized effect on a region that is poorly connected by pipeline to the rest of the country. See our PADD districts explainer and crack spreads explainer for how regional capacity feeds into margins.

Cushing and the WTI Benchmark

The U.S. price benchmark, West Texas Intermediate, is a futures contract settled by physical delivery at Cushing, Oklahoma, a tank-farm and pipeline hub between the producing basins and the Gulf Coast refineries. That design ties a national price to stocks in one town. The EIA's weekly petroleum report prints Cushing inventories on their own line, and traders read that number alongside the national commercial total because a full or nearly empty Cushing can move the front of the WTI futures curve far more than the national figure would suggest. The April 2020 episode, when the expiring May contract settled below zero, is the extreme case.

The EIA stopped publishing its working storage capacity survey after the March 2024 data, so current capacity figures for Cushing now come from operators and private sources rather than from the agency. For how the delivery point works, the effect of low and high tank levels, and what the weekly Cushing line does and does not tell you, see our Cushing delivery point explainer and the contango versus backwardation explainer.

Trade: Still a Large Importer of Crude

Record production has not ended U.S. crude imports. According to the EIA's March 10, 2026 analysis of 2025 exports (checked October 2026):

• U.S. crude exports averaged 4.0 million b/d in 2025, down 3% from 2024, the first annual decrease since 2021, and about 85 times the 2011 level.
• Net crude imports (imports minus exports) fell to 2.2 million b/d in 2025 from 2.5 million b/d in 2024.
• Europe remained the largest export region, though shipments there fell 7%. Exports to China fell 89% and to Singapore 75%, while India, Japan, the Netherlands, and Nigeria took more.

Supplier of U.S. crude imports	2024 (thousand b/d)	2025 (thousand b/d)
Canada	4,062	3,910
Mexico	464	383
Saudi Arabia	274	269
Guyana	176	208
Brazil	221	198
Colombia	214	194
Iraq	198	179
Venezuela	228	140
All countries	6,588	6,168

Source: EIA, U.S. imports by country of origin, annual (checked October 2026).

Canada supplied about 63% of U.S. crude imports in 2025. The reason a record producer still imports is crude quality: many U.S. refineries were built or upgraded to run heavy, sour crude, while U.S. shale output is mostly light and sweet. Exporting light oil and importing heavy oil can be cheaper than reconfiguring refineries. Our U.S. oil imports by country explainer covers the grade mismatch, and the WTI-Brent spread explainer covers the price signal that decides how much light crude leaves the Gulf Coast.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve in 2026

The SPR stores crude in underground salt caverns at four Gulf Coast sites, Bryan Mound and Big Hill in Texas and West Hackberry and Bayou Choctaw in Louisiana, with an authorized storage capacity of 714 million barrels, according to the Department of Energy (checked October 2026). The DOE lists combined contracted marine distribution capacity of 2.22 million barrels per day across three marine terminals.

EIA weekly data show how far the reserve has been drawn in 2026:

Week ending	SPR crude stocks (thousand barrels)
January 2, 2026	413,464
October 2, 2026	282,983
October 16, 2026	282,683

Source: EIA, weekly U.S. crude oil stocks in the SPR (checked October 2026).

Between the first week of January and mid-October 2026, the SPR fell by about 130.8 million barrels, and at 282.7 million barrels it held about 40% of its authorized capacity (PetroEyes arithmetic).

Spread over the 287 days between those two weekly readings, the decline works out to an average of about 456,000 b/d leaving the reserve. That is roughly one-ninth of 2025 average crude exports, or about 3% of 2025 domestic production, delivered from government storage rather than from wells. The flat readings in October, 282,983 thousand barrels in two consecutive weeks and then a small further dip, suggest the pace had slowed sharply by autumn. Weekly SPR changes can reflect the timing of exchange returns and contracted deliveries as well as sales, so a single week's change is a weak signal; the cumulative change over months is the useful measure. The background to the 2026 release is covered in our news analysis of the 2026 coordinated oil release, and the drawdown arithmetic in SPR depletion mathematics.

Two points help when reading this line. First, a lower SPR means less government capacity to respond to the next supply disruption, which is why the weekly number is watched closely. Second, the SPR is separate from commercial crude inventories, which the EIA reports on its own line in the weekly petroleum report; the two should not be added when judging market tightness. Our guide to the EIA weekly petroleum status report shows where each line sits.

Natural Gas and LNG

U.S. dry natural gas production was 39.29 trillion cubic feet in 2025, about 107.6 Bcf/d, up from about 103.1 Bcf/d in 2024 (PetroEyes conversion of the EIA annual series, checked October 2026). The EIA's October 2026 STEO puts U.S. LNG exports at 15.1 Bcf/d in 2025 and forecasts 17.6 Bcf/d for 2026, with the Henry Hub spot price averaging $3.53 per million British thermal units in 2025 and a forecast $3.48 in 2026. Pipeline exports to Mexico averaged about 6.6 Bcf/d in 2025 (PetroEyes conversion of EIA annual data), a link covered on our Mexico page.

Much of U.S. gas output is associated gas produced alongside oil in the Permian, so oil drilling decisions affect gas supply and the reverse. That link is one reason the natural gas price can fall even while LNG exports grow.

Ownership, Leasing, and Regulation

The United States differs from most producing countries in one structural way: mineral rights under private land are usually privately owned. Operators lease those rights directly from owners, and state agencies such as the Railroad Commission of Texas or the New Mexico Oil Conservation Division permit and regulate wells. On federal onshore land, the Bureau of Land Management handles leasing, and in federal offshore waters, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement share responsibility.

The practical effect for market readers is speed and fragmentation. Thousands of operators, from integrated majors to small private companies, make independent drilling decisions in response to price. There is no national production quota, so U.S. output changes through the aggregate of those decisions rather than through policy announcements. That is the opposite of the OPEC+ model described in our OPEC+ explainer.

Common Misreadings of U.S. Oil Data

• "Energy independent" versus "net exporter." The United States still imported about 6.2 million b/d of crude in 2025 and exported 4.0 million b/d. Whether the country is a net exporter depends on whether crude alone or crude plus refined products is counted. Headlines often mix the two.
• Crude versus total liquids. The 13.66 million b/d figure is crude oil including lease condensate. Total liquids, which add natural gas plant liquids and other supply, are much higher. Compare like with like when ranking countries.
• Weekly versus monthly production. The EIA weekly production estimate is a model-based figure. The monthly survey-based data in the Petroleum Supply Monthly, which this page uses, are more reliable and are released about two months later.
• Reserves as a countdown. As the worked example shows, a 9.5-year reserves-to-production ratio is a snapshot of booked reserves, not a depletion date.
• Capacity versus utilization. A refinery closure cuts capacity, but national product supply depends on how hard the remaining plants run. Utilization is reported weekly; capacity is reported once a year.

What to Watch in the Data

1. EIA monthly state production, to see whether New Mexico keeps carrying national growth.
2. The EIA STEO, published monthly, for the 2026 and 2027 production forecast and the Brent price assumption behind it (the October 2026 edition assumes $96 Brent for 2026 and $84 for 2027).
3. The weekly SPR line, for whether the 2026 drawdown continues, stops, or reverses.
4. The annual refinery capacity survey, especially for PADD 5, where 2025 and 2026 closures are concentrated.
5. Weekly crude imports from Canada, a quick read on the heavy-crude supply that Gulf Coast and Midwest refiners depend on, and on how much Canadian crude is now going elsewhere through the Trans Mountain line.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much oil does the United States produce?

The EIA reports average crude oil production of 13.66 million barrels per day in 2025, a record. Its October 2026 Short-Term Energy Outlook forecasts 13.9 million b/d for 2026 and 14.3 million b/d for 2027.

Which states produce the most oil?

Texas, at 5.76 million b/d in 2025, followed by New Mexico at 2.21 million b/d, according to EIA state data. The federal offshore Gulf produced 1.94 million b/d and North Dakota 1.17 million b/d. Texas and New Mexico together made up about 58% of national output.

How big are U.S. oil reserves?

The EIA put proved reserves of crude oil and lease condensate at 46.0 billion barrels at the end of 2024, down 1% from the year before. New Mexico had the largest increase and Texas the largest decline.

Why does the United States import oil if it is the largest producer?

Because many U.S. refineries are configured for heavier, higher-sulfur crude than most domestic production provides. The United States imported about 6.2 million b/d of crude in 2025, roughly 63% of it from Canada, while exporting 4.0 million b/d, mostly light crude.

How full is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?

EIA data show 282.7 million barrels in the SPR on October 16, 2026, down from 413.5 million barrels in the first week of January 2026. Against the DOE's authorized capacity of 714 million barrels, that is about 40% full.

Is U.S. refining capacity growing?

Not in 2025. The EIA reports operable capacity of 18.2 million barrels per calendar day on January 1, 2026, down more than 250,000 b/cd from a year earlier after closures in Houston and Los Angeles, with the Benicia refinery also removed from monthly estimates from March 2026.

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References

1. U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). U.S. field production of crude oil, annual. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRFPUS2&f=A
2. EIA. Crude oil production by state, annual. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_crd_crpdn_adc_mbblpd_a.htm
3. EIA. U.S. Crude Oil and Natural Gas Proved Reserves, year-end 2024, released April 7, 2026. https://www.eia.gov/naturalgas/crudeoilreserves/
4. EIA. "U.S. refining capacity decreased during 2025." Today in Energy, June 29, 2026. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67807
5. EIA. "Annual U.S. crude oil exports decrease for first time since 2021." Today in Energy, March 10, 2026. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67324
6. EIA. U.S. imports by country of origin, crude oil, annual. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_epc0_im0_mbblpd_a.htm
7. EIA. Weekly U.S. ending stocks of crude oil in the SPR. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=WCSSTUS1&f=W
8. EIA. Short-Term Energy Outlook, October 6, 2026. https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/
9. EIA. U.S. dry natural gas production, annual. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n9070us2A.htm
10. U.S. Department of Energy. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. https://www.energy.gov/hgeo/opr/strategic-petroleum-reserve

All sources checked October 22, 2026.