US oil production is on course to break pre-pandemic records next year, a government agency has forecast, complicating the Biden administration’s ambitions to shift the country away from fossil fuels.
Output is likely to rise to a fresh annual high of 12.4m barrels a day in 2023, the Energy Information Administration said on Tuesday, eclipsing the previous record volume of 12.3m b/d set in 2019. US natural gas production will also set new records over the next two years, the independent statistics agency said.
It marks a stark reversal for an oil and gas industry that was sent into freefall by the pandemic-driven economic downturn, and defies widespread predictions that the country’s oil industry would not recapture peak production levels.