Reuters reports that the United States is the world’s largest oil exporter, overtaking both Saudi Arabia and Russia. Booming US shale production and disruptions to Russian and Saudi exports tied to war, sanctions, and attacks on energy infrastructure boosted U.S. production.
US crude and fuel exports reached about 10.5 million barrels per day in May, marking the third straight month America has led the world in oil exports, according to Reuters.
It is a remarkable turnaround for a nation once an Arab oil embargo victim:
#BREAKING – U.S. becomes the world’s largest oil exporter, upending a decades-old order long dominated by Saudi Arabia and Russia pic.twitter.com/SX92t0buWP
— Salem News Channel (@WatchSalemNews) June 12, 2026
America’s ascendancy to the top spot marks a stunning reversal for a country that was dependent on Middle Eastern oil for decades and suffered from an oil embargo imposed by some OPEC members in 1973 to retaliate against U.S. support for Israel, reports Reuters.
Reuters:
U.S. fortunes began to change after 2010, when oil and gas output from its shale formations soared, first making it the world’s top gas and then the world’s top oil producer.
U.S. exports of crude and fuel climbed to about 10.5 million barrels per day in May on the back of high output and the release of strategic reserves, data from ship tracking services Vortexa showed, making the U.S. the top global exporter for the third month in a row. Russian exports stood at 7 million bpd in May, according to Reuters’ calculations, while Saudi Arabia’s exports stood at 5.9 million bpd, according to Vortexa. In comparison, Saudi Arabia exported about 8.1 million bpd in 2025, while the United States shipped out 6.6 million bpd, and Russian exports stood at about 5.8 million bpd, according to Vortexa data.
This gives the U.S. tremendous power.
The new U.S. dominance could weaken the pricing power that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies have historically held over oil markets. U.S. President Donald Trump has long criticized OPEC for manipulating the markets. The group also suffered a blow in May when one of its biggest members, the United Arab Emirates, left the organization after nearly 60 years.
The biggest oil exporter spot will give Washington a powerful new lever in talks with allies and rivals in addition to its global military supremacy and its dominance of financial markets, thanks to the U.S. dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency.
Donald Trump has played an enormous role. Indeed, in his first 100 hours this term, he announced a plan to ‘unleash American energy.’ However, without the shale revolution, this would not have happened. It tripled the US oil output in under fifteen years, says Stephen Moore.
Shale gas also helped break the back of the OPEC cartel, which, for nearly half a century, had a knife to the neck of the U.S. economy and could, by turning off the spigots, plunge it into a recession. Now a study shows that fracking shale oil and gas has made America rich.
The University of California, Berkeley’s Energy Institute at Haas released blockbuster findings on the shale gas revolution:
“It may seem like a distant memory now, but as of the mid-2000s, U.S. natural gas production had been flat for a decade, and the U.S. was importing liquefied natural gas (LNG), with plans to import much more. Then shale gas happened. Advances in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling caused U.S. natural gas production to increase significantly, and the U.S. went from being a net importer of natural gas to being the world’s largest exporter. We calculate that U.S. natural gas consumers have saved $3.1-$4.3 trillion between 2007 and 2025, equivalent to $164-$227 billion annually.”
