USA leaves Russia behind among world's biggest producers of oil and gas

Russia is no longer the largest producer of natural gas. Oil production in the USA has gained 1.6 million barrels a day, BP Plc's Statistical Review of World Energy said. Gas output has also grown, putting America ahead of Russia on the list of world's largest producers of hydrocarbons, Pravda.Ru reports. 

The data showing the U.S.'s emergence as the top driller confirms a trend that's helped the world's largest economy reduce imports, caused a slump in global energy prices and shifted the country's foreign policy priorities.

"We are truly witnessing a changing of the guard of global energy suppliers," BP Chief Economist Spencer Dale said in a presentation. "The implications of the shale revolution for the U.S. are profound."

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The other major shift BP's report shows is China's energy demand growing at the slowest pace since the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s as the economy slows and the country tries to reduce its reliance on heavy industry.

"Growth in some of China's most energy-intensive sectors, such as steel, iron and cement -- which had thrived during China's rapid industrialization -- virtually collapsed in 2014," said Dale, a former Bank of England chief economist who joined BP last year. 

In the U.S.,the boom in oil and gas production has started to change the economy profoundly. Cheap fuel has seen manufacturing return to the U.S. as the country produced about 90 percent of the energy it consumed last year.

The U.S. increase in oil output last year, helping it to overtake Saudi Arabia as a crude producer, was the first time a country has raised production by at least 1 million barrels a day for three consecutive years, BP said.

Pravda.Ru