The U.S. will become a consistent net petroleum exporter late next year, the government has forecast, an astonishing shift that reflects surging domestic crude oil production.

The country will ship out more crude oil and liquid fuels than it imports by September 2020 and the net export total will surpass 1 million barrels a day by December 2020, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in a monthly energy outlook issued Jan. 15.

The prospect raises the stakes for members of the OPEC cartel and allied producers struggling to stabilize oil markets in the face of U.S. shale supplies, which can accelerate quickly when prices rise.

U.S. Crude Oil Production (Source: EIA Short Term Energy Outlook, January 2019)

West Texas Intermediate crude was trading at $51.73 a barrel in New York on Jan. 15, down more than 30% from its peak last year but still a profitable level for leading producers in shale basins.

The EIA forecast, its first short-term projections for 2020, said U.S. crude oil production would rise to average 12 million barrels per day (bbl/d) in 2019 and 12.9 million bbl/d in 2020 after breaking historical output records last year, the independent analysis agency said. By December 2020 production would reach 13.4 million bbl/d.

U.S. Net Imports Of Crude Oil And Liquid Fuels (Source: EIA Short Term Energy Outlook, January 2019)

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The U.S. will continue to import nearly 5 million bbl/d more crude oil than it exports, EIA said. But growth in simultaneous crude oil exports—helped by the abolition of federal export restrictions in 2015—and in outbound shipments of refined fuels such as petrol and diesel would cement its status as a net exporter.

The U.S. in late November reported one week in which it was fleetingly a net petroleum exporter for the first time in decades. The EIA’s new forecast sees that anomaly becoming the norm.

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The EIA said U.S. gross exports of natural gas will increase by more than half between 2018 and 2020, as exports of LNG climb in that period from about 3 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) to 6.8 Bcf/d thanks to new liquefaction terminals opening along the Gulf of Mexico coast.