5 Big Energy Stories - 12.10.2025: U.S. Oil Industry Adds a Saudi Arabia to its Portfolio

American producers have added a Saudia Arabia in monthly oil production since September, 2008 - No link to this one since this factoid just popped into my weird brain while I was in the middle of recording a podcast on Tuesday.

Fact: In September 2008 - the month before the first successful oil well was drilled by Petrohawk or EOG Resources (both companies claim ownership of the blessed event) in the Eagle Ford Shale, the U.S. oil industry managed to produce just 3.974 million bpd nationwide according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Fact: 17 years later, in September 2025, EIA says America’s drillers produced a whopping 13.844 million bpd, an increase of almost 10 million barrels each and every day. Companies produced far more oil in Texas alone in this month than they did nationwide 17 years before.

This is the economic blessing of the U.S. shale revolution, and its advent took place a month after the collapse of the U.S. economy into the Great Recession. Across the next five years - the first five years of the Barack Obama presidency - the oil and gas industry stood as the lone growth industry in the entire U.S. economy, providing a firm foundation of growth which most likely saved the country from a full-on depression.

(That’s another fact, by the way.)

Fact: Again, according to the EIA, Saudi Arabia’s total oil production (plus lease condensate) for August 2025 - September numbers are not yet available - was 9.320 million bpd.

So, in just 17 years, the incredibly resilient and innovative U.S. oil and gas industry in which I proudly toiled for more than 40 years added a Saudi Arabia of additional production.

To paraphrase the late, great Hans Gruber from the fabulous Christmas season movie “Die Hard”: You asked for a miracle, I give you America’s oil industry.