The United States Is On Course To Be The World’s #1 Oil Producer In 8 Years

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Last updated on October 27th, 2012 at 01:12 am

Despite the absolutely ridiculous claims the GOP are making about American oil production, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the United States may soon be the world’s largest oil producing nation, overtaking Saudi Arabia.

The Department of Energy is forecasting that by 2020, U.S. production of oil could reach 15 million barrels a day, putting the nation’s production above Saudi Arabia.

Just next year the average will be 11.4 million barrels, just below what the output of Saudi Arabia is right now.

Here is a quick list on why oil production is so high right now.

Production in the Gulf of Mexico, which slowed after BP’s 2010 well disaster and oil spill, has begun to climb again. Huge recent finds there are expected to help growth continue.

A long period of high oil prices has given drillers the cash and the motivation to spend the large sums required to develop new techniques and search new places for oil. Over the past decade, oil has averaged $69 a barrel. During the previous decade, it averaged $21.

A natural gas glut forced drillers to dramatically slow natural gas exploration beginning about a year ago. Drillers suddenly had plenty of equipment and workers to shift to oil.

So the Republican claim that we aren’t drilling enough in this country is a flat out lie. Regardless of where the oil comes from, whether it may be offshore, federal land, state or private land, oil production in America is high.

Oil prices on the other hand are not coming down. This begs the question why isn’t Drill Baby Drill working to lower oil prices? I thought blaming Wall Street speculators was wrong and misguided.

It turns out that drilling our way to lower gas and oil just won’t work, so we need a new approach — and that is the approach of President Obama.