With oil prices well over the $100 per barrel mark US energy secretary Jennifer Granholm, exhorted US oil companies to increase production.
“We need oil and gas production to rise,” Granholm told conference attendees, speaking at S&P’s Ceraweek oil industry conference, noting that the US was on “war footing.”
Granholm’s statements comes as US the oil industry has been paring back on exploration and production investment after US field crude oil production reached its historical peak of 12.96 million barrels per day in November 2019, crashing to 9.71 million barrels per day in May 2020.
US oil producers have been at loggerheads with the Biden administration over the pausing of Gulf of Mexico lease sales and particularly the invalidation of the results of the only federal lease sale for natural oil and gas held in 2021.
The American Petroleum Institute appealed this ruling in February and has called for the timely continuation of the lease sales.
