Turning The Tide
Even after oil prices began falling in June 2014, U.S. production (including condensates) continued to increase by another 1 million barrels per day (bpd).
Between June 2014 and its peak in April 2015, oil output rose from an estimated 8.7 million bpd to 9.7 million bpd, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Since April 2015, production has fallen, but it was still running at 9.3 million bpd in November 2015, the latest month for which reasonably comprehensive estimates are available.
Figure 2
How much progress this represents depends on the baseline against which it is measured. In absolute terms, output has fallen by around 375,000 bpd between the peak in April 2015 and November 2015.
If output had continued to increase on its pre-June 2014 trend, it would have been running at almost 11 million bpd by November 2015.
The reduction compared to the pre-June 2014 trend is around 1.6 million bpd, which is one measure of how far the strategy has worked (see Figure 1).
The EIA was more cautious about the outlook for U.S. oil output; in June 2014 the agency predicted oil output would be running at 9.5 million bpd in November 2015.