Record American oil and gas

Ask an Indiana corn farmer who sets the price of his corn. He will not point at his own field. He will point toward Chicago, where the world's crop is bought and sold. A bumper harvest in Indiana does not do much for the price if there is a drought in Brazil.

But in a drought year, watch who comes through standing. The farmer with a full bin still feeds his cattle, still sells to his neighbors, and gets paid well for every bushel he can spare. American oil works the same way, and right now America has the fullest bin on earth.

The records

In 2025 the United States produced a record 13.6 million barrels of crude oil a day, according to the Energy Information Administration, about 40% more than Russia or Saudi Arabia. Natural gas production set a record at 118.5 billion cubic feet a day. Liquefied natural gas exports jumped 26%, and America supplied 26% of all the LNG traded in the world.

The administration pushed the throttle. Since January 2025, the Energy Department has approved about 22.3 billion cubic feet a day of new LNG export authority, more than the country's entire export capacity on Inauguration Day. In 2026, gas output set a monthly record in July, and EIA expects crude to average 13.9 million barrels a day this year, another annual record, though no single month of 2026 has yet beaten October 2025.

What the bin does in a drought

On February 28 the Iran war closed the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off about 20% of the world's LNG supply. American exports rushed into the hole. In April, exports of crude and petroleum products hit a record 13.6 million barrels a day, and crude exports alone a record 5.6 million, which EIA tied directly to the Hormuz disruption.

Here is what that bin cannot do. Oil is sold on a world market, and crude made up about half the price of a gallon of gasoline last year. When the world price jumps, the pump price follows. September's national average was $4.33, a record for that month.

Production also set records under President Biden; 2024's 13.2 million barrels a day was the previous high. That is true. But the Persian Gulf now supplies just 8.5% of American oil imports, down from 23% a generation ago, and the Bush Institute noted in March that, unlike in the 1970s, America was not at immediate risk of a gasoline shortage. EIA also expects homes heated with natural gas to spend less this winter, and says rising American gas production is more than keeping up with exports.

A full bin does not stop the drought. It decides who comes through it standing.