US oil reserves overtook Russia and Saudi Arabia

The United States is currently ahead of Saudi Arabia and Russia in terms of oil production, with half of this volume being shale oil.

This is evidenced by the new data of the consulting company Rystad Energy. In Texas alone, there are 60 billion barrels of shale oil.

According to Rystad, the estimated total oil reserves in the US (264 billion barrels) now exceed those of the leading oil-exporting countries - Saudi Arabia (212 billion barrels) and Russia (256 billion barrels).

The Oslo-based company estimates global oil reserves at 2 092 billion barrels, which is equal to 30 billions of barrels of crude oil per year at current production rates.

“These data confirm that the amount of recoverable oil on the planet is limited,” Rystad said in a statement. “It becomes obvious that oil alone cannot meet the growing demand for individual transport.”

The large jump in reserves in the United States is largely due to technological advances, such as hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, which allow shale oil and gas to be extracted.

Since the beginning of the 2000-s, shale oil from fields such as the Bakken formation in North Dakota and the Permian Basin in Texas has helped change the long-term trend towards a reduction in US oil production.

“This is encouraging data,” Saeed Irani, president of Irani Engineering, one of California's leading oil companies, told the Los Angeles Times. “This shows that even with such a large and diversified economy in our country, oil will still play a significant role in it.”

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