Oct. 14, 2014: A pump jack is seen at sunrise near Bakersfield, California. (Reuters)
The United States has overtaken Russia as the biggest oil and natural gas producer in the world, in what one economist has described as “a changing of the guard of global energy suppliers."
Bloomberg reported Wednesday that U.S. oil production rose to a record 1.6 million barrels a day last year, according to BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy. Natural gas output also soared, which inched America ahead of Russia as a producer of the two combined.
“We are truly witnessing a changing of the guard of global energy suppliers,” BP Chief Economist Spencer Dale said in a presentation on the data Wednesday, Bloomberg reported. “The implications of the shale revolution for the U.S. are profound.”
The BP report also shows China’s energy demand is growing at the slowest pace since the Asian Financial Crisis in the 1990s as the communist nation suffers a slowing of its economy and tries to reduce its reliance on heavy industry, Bloomberg reported.
In the United States, the report finds that the oil and gas boom has changed the economy, allowing manufacturing to return as the country produced about 90 percent of the energy it consumed last year.
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