U.S. crude oil production by year

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Crude oil was discovered in the United States of America in 1859 in the Oil Creek area (Pennsylvania). Since then oil industry has been developing fast in the country. In 2008 the United States became world’s third-largest oil producers after Saudi Arabia and Russia. Total output in 2008 reached 8.5 million barrels of both oil and natural gas liquids per day.

There are several main oil producing regions in the United States: Texas with average daily output of 3.17 million barrels as in 2014, the federal zone of the Gulf of Mexico (1.40 million barrels per day), North Dakota (1.09 million barrels per day) and California which produces about 500,000 barrels of crude oil daily.

The oil production started to rise in the first decades of the twentieth century hitting a record of 9,637 thousand barrels per day in 1970. After that the U.S. annual crude oil production was declining. The biggest drop was registered in 2008 – the output was 5 million barrels per day that year. According to the data from U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2015 the USA produced on average 9,415 thousand barrels per day.