Although the U.S. marked an historic shift in 2020 by becoming a net exporter of petroleum, it has remained a net importer of crude oil since the end of the Second World War, according to Energy Information Administration (EIA) data. For the relatively uninitiated, which appears to include Saudi Arabia in its ‘oil output figures’ of anything above its true average crude oil production figure of 8.23 million barrels per day (bpd) from 1973 to the end of last week, petroleum and crude oil are not interchangeable words in global oil market terms. Basically, ‘crude oil’ is just crude oil, but petroleum includes crude oil, refined petroleum products, and other liquids (including gas condensates). This technical but important distinction aside, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that 2023 may see the U.S. finally become a net exporter of crude oil for the first time since 1945 and the ramifications of this for its policy towards the Middle East could be huge.
To get the figures out of the way first: the EIA forecasts that the U.S.’s net crude oil imports will fall to 3.4 million bpd in 2023 as domestic crude oil production increases to an annual average close to the all-time monthly high of 13 million bpd in November, all other factors remaining equal. In the run-up from its historic shift
in 2020 to become a net exporter of petroleum products, the U.S. was producing an average of just over 11 million bpd of crude oil from the beginning of 2020 to end of 2022. However, in the last few months of 2022, the U.S. produced over 12 million bpd, on a rising trajectory, with the EIA initially forecasting that its crude oil production in 2023 would average at least 12.44 million bpd. On the other side of the supply/demand equation, in recent years, the U.S. has steadily consumed around 20 million bpd of crude oil, leaving a net crude oil import figure of around 7 million bpd. However, according to the EIA, in 2021 the U.S. only imported 6.1 million bpd of crude oil, although this figure rose to 6.3 million bpd in the first half of 2022. Additionally, according to widely circulated U.S. government data, November 2022 saw the U.S. import just 1.1 million bpd of crude oil
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Partly this was due to sanctions on Russian crude oil and gas exports but in larger part it was due to the rolling releases of crude oil from the U.S.’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve and to the above-mentioned production increases in U.S. crude oil production in the latter part of 2022. Short-term reductions in U.S. crude oil imports can continue to be affected every now and again by such SPR releases. However, the onus for sustained import reductions to allow the U.S. to become a net exporter of crude oil can come from policies announced by U.S. President Joe Biden’s team when oil prices were spiking around the time of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Back in March, U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said that Biden’s