The Energy Information Administration (EIA) now expects US crude oil output to average a record 13.8 million barrels a day in 2026, up from 13.6 million barrels a day in 2025. The agency raised its forecast in its August Short Term Energy Outlook, the fourth straight upward revision this year, and the US now accounts for roughly 18% of world crude supply.
That the shale era is maturing is not really in dispute. Oil executives at Occidental and ConocoPhillips have both said publicly they expect US output to plateau sometime before 2030, and Wall Street banks including Goldman Sachs have made the same call. The debate is not whether growth is slowing. It is whether 2026's specific record reflects that slower, steadier plateau, or something more fragile.
#Where the Extra Barrels Are Actually Coming From
Permian production is on track to average about 6.6 million barrels a day in 2026, essentially flat with 2025. The EIA says falling prices earlier this year pushed close to, or below, reported breakeven levels for many operators there. Recent surveys put Permian breakevens in the low $60s a barrel, and roughly 60% of the basin's premium drilling acreage is already tapped.
The Federal Gulf of America is filling the gap instead, rising toward 2.0 million barrels a day as new offshore projects come online. Alaska adds a smaller amount too. Together they explain most of this year's increase, even as the basin that made the US the world's top producer barely grows.
#What Sets 2026 Apart From the Plateau Story
The plateau argument rests on geology. Tier one Permian acreage is running out, and each new well replaces production faster than it adds it. That part of the consensus looks solid, and the EIA's own Permian numbers back it up.
What is less discussed is how much of this year's headline record depends on price, not geology. Coming into 2026, the EIA expected West Texas Intermediate to average near $50 a barrel, a level low enough to choke off drilling. Instead, renewed attacks on tankers and repeated constraints on the Strait of Hormuz cut oil flows through that chokepoint to under 5 million barrels a day in the second quarter, down from 21.6 million barrels a day before the conflict began. Brent is now forecast near $85 a barrel for the third quarter, and the EIA itself expects the disruption to ease by early 2027.
Even so, prices are not expected to fall all the way back to where the EIA saw them before the conflict. The agency's August outlook still has Brent averaging $69 a barrel in 2027, well above the sub $55 range it was forecasting for next year as recently as January. That higher floor is a big reason the EIA's own 2027 production estimate rose again this month, to 14.19 million barrels a day, a bigger number than its July call. The plateau most analysts expect looks less like a hard ceiling and more like a level that keeps drifting upward as long as prices hold there. Whether it does depends on how quickly Strait of Hormuz flows actually normalize.