• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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US net petroleum exports hits highest levels in February – EIA

net petroleum

The United States was a net exporter of crude oil and petroleum products last month, with the four-week average net imports at a negative 907,000 barrels per day (bpd) in the last week of February, the lowest ‘imports’ level in EIA data dating back to 1973, according to EIA’s weekly data on net imports of crude oil and petroleum products.

Since the start of 2020, the U.S. was a net exporter of crude and petroleum products in each of the weeks in January and February, EIA data shows.

The United States exported more crude oil and petroleum products than it imported in September 2019—the first month in which America was a net petroleum exporter since monthly records began in 1973, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said at the end of last year.

In September 2019, the U.S. exported 89,000 bpd more crude oil and petroleum products than it imported, due to surging U.S. crude oil production and the lifting of export restrictions in 2015, and to continuously growing oil products output and exports, the EIA said in December 2019.

On an annual basis, the United States will become a net oil and oil product exporter this year, thanks to continued growth in production combined with slacker domestic demand, the EIA said in its 2020 Annual Energy Outlook in January.

Despite the ‘net petroleum exporter’ status, the U.S. continues to be a net importer of crude oil—it continues to import more volumes of crude oil than it exports.

In November 2019, the latest monthly data, America imported 5.8 million bpd of crude oil and exported 3.0 million bpd of crude, the EIA said last month.

Moreover, despite the fact that the United States is now a net petroleum exporter as a whole, most regions other than the U.S. Gulf Coast region remain net petroleum importers, the EIA noted.