The United States’ export boom of oil-based petroleum products is significantly reducing its trade deficit, the federal government reported Monday.
U.S. net exports of crude oil and petroleum products — the value of exports minus imports — increased $158 billion from 2008 to the fourth quarter of 2013, according to a report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The EIA said this jump largely explains why the nation’s deficit in trading goods fell $131 billion during that period — from $816 billion to $686 billion.
“Since 2009, exports of petroleum and petroleum products have played a growing role in reducing the overall merchandise trade deficit,” said the EIA, the statistical arm of the Department of Energy. The data show this trade deficit would now be nearly $200 billion higher without U.S. petroleum exports.
Despite recent increases in U.S. exports of crude oil, which the federal government sharply restricts, the EIA said nearly all petroleum exports are refined products.
U.S. petroleum exports are soaring, mostly because new mining techniques — notably the combined use of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing or fracking — are extracting huge amounts of oil and natural gas from shale rock formations.
U.S. crude oil production, rising steadily since 2008, is likely next year to hit its highest level since 1972, the EIA reported earlier this month. It has jumped from 5 million barrels per day in 2008 to 7.4 million last year and is expected to average 8.5 million this year and 9.3 million next year.
This boom, along with a rise in natural gas liquids production, has dramatically lowered petroleum imports. The EIA said the share of U.S. liquid fuels consumption met by net imports — down from 60% in 2005 to 33% in 2013 — is expected to fall to 22% in 2015, which would be the lowest since 1970.
Last year, the U.S. set a record for total and net exports of oil-based petroleum products. It now exports far more of these than it imports. It’s also now producing more crude oil than it imports, but it still imports 35% of the petroleum it uses.