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US to pip Russia in oil output

The prediction comes only days after estimates by the US government showed the United States, the world’s largest oil consumer, has ceded its ranking as top global oil importer to China, thanks to the shale revolution cutting import needs.

“The United States’ place in the driver’s seat of growth is also a throwback to decades past,” the International Energy Agency, or IEA, said in its monthly report.

The US resurgence as an oil producer is already reshuffling the cards in the game of world energy diplomacy, playing it a new hand in relations with long-term ally and top Opec producer Saudi Arabia.

Major producers such as Russia are now forced to invest billions of dollars into new pipelines towards Asia as they can no longer rely on demand from the West, and have to deal with increasingly assertive Beijing.

“With output of more than 10 million barrels per day for the last two quarters, its highest in decades, the nation is set to become the largest non-Opec liquids producer by the second quarter of 2014, overtaking Russia. And that’s not even counting biofuels and refinery gains,” the IEA said.

The agency estimated that US liquids production will average 11 million bpd in 2014 versus 10.86 million in Russia.