The US shale revolution has profoundly changed oil markets over past decade, not only turning the US into the improbable top producer in the world, but also shifting the balance of crude qual- ity in global markets. The combination of prolonged sweet US shale crude growth and today’s severe constraints to global heavy oil production has changed the world’s crude slate, creating challenges for refiners, changes in oil trade flows and distorting historical differentials between sweet and sour crudes. The US went from a nation with crude oil production clearly in terminal decline, losing nearly 4.6 million barrels per day between a 1971 peak of 9.64 million b/d to an annual trough of 5 million b/d in 2008 - a level not seen since 1946 - to the fastest-growing oil producer in the world, with output expected to average over 12 million in 2019. With the the removal of the crude oil export ban in December 2015, US crude oil is entering world markets in unprecedented volumes, while imports are rapidly replaced by domestic shale output. US oil exports averaged nearly 3 million b/d in the first half of 2019, and the vast majority of incremental barrels in the future must be exported. This has particularly upset the Atlantic Basin sweet-sour balance and related trade between West Africa and the US, and to a lesser extent trans-Atlantic trade between the US and the North Sea.
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