New data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) shows output rose by about 3 per cent, or 350,000 b/d, compared to 2024. The increase came despite a 5 per cent drop in active rigs and fewer wells drilled, highlighting a structural shift in how U.S. producers are growing supply.

The gains reinforce the United States’ position as the world’s largest oil producer and contribute to expectations of a global supply surplus. Reuters has reported that rising U.S. output is a key factor behind forecasts of an oversupplied global market, with production expected to average roughly 13.6 million b/d in 2025.

Efficiency offsets lower prices

The 2025 production increase came as benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude prices fell to about $65 per barrel, down from $77 in 2024. Normally, lower prices would dampen output, but U.S. producers continued to extract more oil from fewer wells.

New wells added 2.9 million b/d of production in 2025, while existing wells accounted for 8.3 million b/d. Industry analysts have increasingly pointed to productivity gains — including longer laterals, improved fracking techniques, and better data analytics — as the main driver of growth.

Bloomberg has similarly reported that U.S. shale producers are pumping more oil per dollar invested, allowing output to rise even as capital spending and rig counts decline.

This decoupling of production from drilling activity marks a significant evolution in the shale sector, where companies have shifted focus from rapid expansion to capital discipline and efficiency.

Permian dominates growth

As in previous years, the Permian Basin remained the engine of U.S. production growth. Output in the region rose by 280,000 b/d in 2025 to reach 6.6 million b/d — nearly half of total U.S. supply.

Low breakeven costs continue to underpin Permian growth. According to the Dallas Fed Energy Survey, operators in the Midland and Delaware basins reported breakeven prices of roughly $61–$62 per barrel in 2025, below the annual average oil price. That cost advantage has allowed producers to sustain output even in a weaker price environment.

By contrast, other major shale regions showed limited growth. Production in the Eagle Ford rose modestly to 1.2 million b/d, while the Bakken saw a slight decline to a similar level.

Together, the Permian, Eagle Ford, and Bakken account for nearly two-thirds of total U.S. crude production.

Offshore projects add supply

Production in the Gulf of America also contributed to overall growth, rising by 111,000 b/d to average 1.9 million b/d in 2025.

Five new offshore projects — Whale, Ballymore, Dover, Shenandoah, and Leon-Castile — came online during the year. Unlike shale operations, offshore developments are less sensitive to short-term price fluctuations due to their long lead times and high upfront capital costs.

This steady pipeline of offshore projects is helping to diversify U.S. supply growth beyond shale basins.

Global implications

The global outlook for oil markets has shifted rapidly in recent weeks. The war in Iran and severe disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz — which typically carries about one-fifth of global oil — have tightened supply and driven prices sharply higher. With tanker traffic collapsing and infrastructure under attack, the market is moving away from fears of oversupply toward a more constrained and volatile environment.

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Vienna, Austria:  Last week, the International Energy Agency (IEA) in its report “The Oil and Gas Industry in Net Zero Transitions” stated that the oil and gas industry faces a ‘moment of truth’.  The industry has been told that it must “choose between fuelling the climate crisis or embracing a shift to clean energy”, against the backdrop of the IEA’s proposed normative net-zero scenario.

As we have recently seen from the IEA, this presents an extremely narrow framing of the challenges before us, and perhaps expediently plays down such issues as energy security, energy access and energy affordability. It also unjustly vilifies the industry as being behind the climate crisis.

OPEC Secretary General, Haitham Al Ghais said: “It is ironic that the IEA, an agency that has repeatedly shifted its narratives and forecasts on a regular basis in recent years, now addresses the oil and gas industry and says that this is a ‘moment of truth’. The manner in which the IEA has unfortunately used its social media platforms in recent days to criticize and instruct the oil and gas industry is undiplomatic to say the least. OPEC itself is not an organization that would prescribe to others what they should do.”

OPEC also believes that the proposed IEA ‘Framework to assess the alignment of company targets with the NZE Scenario’ is a tool intended to curtail the sovereign actions and choices of oil and gas producing developing countries, through pressurizing their National Oil Companies.

The framework also contradicts with the Paris Agreement’s ‘bottom-up’ approach, where each country decides the means of contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions reduction, based on national capabilities and circumstances, and will likely lead to reduced investment and undermine security of supplies, which is one of the IEA’s key mandates.

Regrettably, the IEA report now also calls technologies such as carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) an “illusion”, even though Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment reports endorse such technologies as part of the solution to tackle climate change.

“The truth that needs to be spoken is simple and clear to those who wish to see it. It is that the energy challenges before us are enormous and com­plex and cannot be limited to one binary question,” said Al Ghais.

“Energy security, energy access and energy affordability for all must go hand-in-hand with reducing emissions. This requires major investments in all energies, all technologies, and an understanding of the needs of all peoples. At OPEC, we repeat that we believe the world has to concentrate on the task of reducing emissions, not choosing energy sources,” he added.

This industry is embracing renewables, with major investments being made, and it is investing in technologies to reduce emissions, such as CCUS, direct air capture, carbon dioxide removal and clean hydrogen. In fact, some OPEC Member Countries are global leaders in this respect.

In a world where more dialogue is needed, we repeat that finger pointing is not a constructive approach. It is important to work collaboratively and act with determination to ensure that emissions are reduced and people have access to the energy products and services they require to live a comfortable life. “These twin challenges should not be at odds with each other,” said Al Ghais.

Al Ghais added: “We do see a ‘moment of truth’ ahead. We need to understand that all countries have their own orderly energy transition pathways, we need an assurance that all voices are heard, not just a select few, and we need to ensure that energy transitions enable economic growth, enhance social mobility, boost energy access, and reduce emissions at the same time.”

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By Sarah M. Munoz, Doctoral researcher in political science / Doctorante en science politique, Université de Montréal

The political response to the climate crisis remains largely inadequate in the face of heat waves, hurricanes, floods and forest fires that are accelerating and intensifying.

The political inertia can be explained, among other things, by the stranglehold of fossil fuel interests on political decision-makers, and the strong influence polluting industries have on the spheres of power in North America.

These industries use two types of discourse to secure their interests. First, they discredit and marginalize ecological issues. Just think, for example, of the actions taken by oil and gas companies against climate policies, such as in Seattle, Wash., where they hired lobbyists to torpedo pro-environmental policies adopted by the city, and simultaneously paid Instagram influencers to promote gas.

Secondly, industry acts to convince people that their polluting activities are compatible with managing the climate and environmental crises. These rebranding strategies are part of a wider objective of “greenwashing” extractive activities. Over the past three decades, the five biggest U.S. oil companies have spent more than US$3 billion on marketing and donations to boost their communications with the general public and political decision-makers.

Making citizens responsible for curbing the climate crisis

One particularly significant rhetorical strategy the oil industry has adopted is to place responsibility for climate change mitigation and adaptation on the individual.

By putting the burden of reducing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions — and consequently the fight against climate change — on individuals, oil companies and their political allies are taking the onus off themselves to make changes to their fossil fuel production, consumption and exploitation practices.

As a doctoral student in political science and a specialist in climate change adaptation, I have examined the interests, ideas and institutions that shape and restrict our adaptation practices. For the past three years, I have been analyzing environmental discourses in Louisiana to explain why climate policies are moving so slowly.

The carbon footprint as a symbol of industry marketing

The most obvious expression of this strategy of placing responsibility on the individual is the creation of the carbon footprint. Born of a communications strategy by the giant British Petroleum in the early 2000s called “Beyond Petroleum,” the carbon footprint measures the impact of individual consumption on greenhouse gas emissions.

Through numerous advertisements promoting the importance of individual action in the climate crisis, BP has succeeded in shifting responsibility for the climate problem onto the consumer. This, in turn, removes the industry’s responsibility for finding solutions and reducing carbon emissions.

BP’s “Beyond Petroleum” campaign was also designed to encourage individuals to adopt a more sustainable lifestyle while maintaining their consumption levels. This strategy contributes to what researchers Karl Smerecnik and Valerie Renegar of San Diego State University and Southwestern University call capitalistic agency.

By endorsing the environmentalist image and removing themselves as the source of the problem, oil giants limit people’s ability to think about other forms of environmental action beyond consumption, and thus, economic growth. It confines the individual and his or her responsibility towards climate change within the logic of the market, reducing the possibilities for systemic transformation.

ExxonMobil and Total also engage in the same strategies. They emphasize greenhouse gas emissions as a problem of demand, not supply, creating an imaginary concept around the individual as a consumer and the sole stakeholder responsible for mitigating climate change.

This communication strategy legitimizes the continued production of fossil fuels and serves to protect the industry from restrictive environmental regulations by pointing the finger at growing demand.

Louisiana’s “green” and community-based oil industry

My doctoral research on the political discourses and practices of adaptation in Louisiana shows that fossil fuel industries rely on this rhetorical and marketing logic. “Greenwashing” enables them to turn their role on its head and present themselves as genuine environmental saviours by investing in coastal restoration and promoting an eco-responsible, community-based industry.

Lobbyists for major oil companies like ExxonMobil and advocacy groups like the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil & Gas Association, as well as their political partners in the Louisiana Senate and House of Representatives, insist on the “green” nature of fossil fuels.

This rhetoric conveys the idea that preserving extractive activities is a benefit for the United States and for the fight against climate change. According to this line of reasoning, American oil and gas have a better carbon footprint than oil and gas produced internationally. They, therefore, help reduce global emissions in the face of growing consumer demand.

The “green” fossil fuel narrative is also gaining momentum in the legislative spheres of other states, ensuring the stranglehold of these industries on local economies.

Referring to the ecological activities of oil companies in Louisiana as a true “Cajun environmental movement,” lobbyists solicit local identities and citizen support in an effort to preserve their operating activities. This other form of individualization targets climate policies, particularly those of the Biden administration, as a direct attack on the interests and well-being of local populations.

A veritable “oil culture” has thus emerged through community investment (for example, Shell’s long-standing funding of the Jazz and Heritage Festival in New Orleans, or of local hurricane recovery operations). It also highlights the entanglement of Cajun identities with the historical development of the local oil industry.

Using individual responsibility to reinforce political inertia

In Louisiana in particular, individualization can be seen in the popular support for extractive activities and the rejection of restrictive regulations or environmental movements. Positioned as true environmental and community protectors, oil and gas industries maintain their influence in legislative spheres through political lobbying and the support of public opinion. In this way, they manage to stave off any reconsideration of their operating practices.

Large-scale individualization, whether through BP’s campaigns or French President Emmanuel Macron’s appeal to schoolchildren to plant trees, reverses responsibility for the fight against climate change. It encourages the political inertia that continues to protect the interests of polluting industries.

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