Permian Basin at 48% of US Crude Output as ExxonMobil-Pioneer Integration Lifts Production to Record 13.6 Million bpd

The United States produced a record 13.6 million barrels per day of crude oil in 2025, with the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico contributing 6.6 million barrels per day, or 48.5 percent of the national total. American output now exceeds Russia's production by 40 percent, and exceeds Saudi Arabia's by a similar margin, according to OilPrice.com. The EIA's July 7, 2026 Short-Term Energy Outlook projects U.S. production will reach 13.8 million barrels per day in 2026 and 14.0 million barrels per day in 2027. This expansion is occurring even as WTI crude traded at $71.85 per barrel on Wednesday's afternoon session, well below the $77 annual average that prevailed in 2024.

How the ExxonMobil-Pioneer Acquisition Reshaped Permian Ownership

ExxonMobil completed its $60 billion acquisition of Pioneer Natural Resources on May 3, 2024, in what Wikipedia described as the largest merger in the petroleum industry in 20 years. Pioneer had been the largest acreage holder in the Midland Basin portion of the Permian and produced close to 649,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day before the deal closed. ExxonMobil's unconventional E&P subsidiary XTO Energy now manages the combined Permian position, making ExxonMobil the single largest operator in the basin. The acquisition channeled Pioneer's drilling inventory and frac technology directly into ExxonMobil's capital allocation framework.

The consolidation trend the ExxonMobil-Pioneer deal represents has concentrated Permian acreage among fewer, better-capitalized operators. Each of those operators can invest in multi-well pad drilling and advanced completion techniques that smaller independents could not afford at scale. The result is a basin that produced more in 2025 at $65 per barrel average WTI than it did in prior years at $77 per barrel.

Permian Crude Value: $173 Billion Per Year at Current WTI Prices

At WTI crude of $71.85 per barrel, per OilPrice.com data for July 9, 2026, the Permian Basin's 6.6 million barrels per day generates $474 million in daily crude value. Annualized, those daily flows total $173 billion in crude value at current prices. As covered in Oil Authority's earlier EIA inventory report, a 3 million-barrel crude build sent WTI to $71.57 before prices firmed to $71.85 by Wednesday afternoon.

The Permian's $173 billion annual crude value at current prices exceeds the estimated oil export revenues of Iraq, which produces 4 million barrels per day at comparable Brent pricing. A single U.S. shale basin now outvalues the full crude output of OPEC's second-largest producer. That comparison captures how the scale of unconventional production has reshaped global oil market arithmetic since 2018.

EIA Projects 14 Million bpd by 2027 as Price Headwinds Build

The EIA's Short-Term Energy Outlook released July 7, 2026 projects Brent crude averaging $82 per barrel in 2026 and falling to $65 per barrel in 2027. That 2027 price forecast assumes Hormuz normalization and OPEC volumes returning to pre-conflict averages by year-end 2026. Federal Reserve Bank of New York President John Williams said July 9 that oil prices appear to be "around their peak and then to come down over time" over the next 6 to 12 months.

If the EIA's 2027 Brent forecast of $65 per barrel materializes, U.S. operators will be producing 14 million barrels per day into a price environment 21 percent below Wednesday's Brent. Shale producers demonstrated in 2025 that they can grow output at $65 WTI, but that tolerance has limits at extended periods near breakeven. The gap between EIA's production growth forecast and its price decline forecast represents the central tension facing Permian operators through 2027.