SUSRIS Daily News – Excerpts from International Media Reports
/Provided as a service from the Saudi-US Trade Group, Washington, DC/
“Energy developments in the United States are profound and their effect will be felt well beyond North America – and the energy sector. The recent rebound in US oil and gas production, driven by upstream technologies that are unlocking light tight oil and shale gas resources, is spurring economic activity – with less expensive gas and electricity prices giving industry a competitive edge – and steadily changing the role of North America in global energy trade. By around 2020, the United States is projected to become the largest global oil producer (overtaking Saudi Arabia until the mid-2020s) and starts to see the impact of new fuel-efficiency measures in transport. The result is a continued fall in US oil imports, to the extent that North America becomes a net oil exporter around 2030.
Based on projections from the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) December 2012 Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), EIA estimates that members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) could earn about $1,052 billion of net oil export revenues in 2012 and about $955 billion in 2013, in nominal terms (unadjusted for inflation). In 2011, EIA estimates that OPEC earned about $1,027 billion in net oil export revenues, a 33-percent increase from 2010. Saudi Arabia earned the largest share of these earnings, $310 billion in 2011, representing approximately 30 percent of total OPEC revenues.
