Refinery run rates and distillation capacity

The U.S. oil and gas industry has undergone remarkable changes over the past ten years. Much of it has been driven by the upstream sector, which spurred on a revolution by unlocking shale and other low-porosity, low-permeability reservoirs. Production of light tight oil (LTO) from shale formations shot up from a 630,000 bpd in 2009 all the way to 7.7 MMbbl/d in 2019. Primarily as a result of this, U.S. total crude production in 2018 (11 MMbbl/d, i.e. millions of barrels per day) and then again in 2019 (12.23 MMbbl/d)(see Fig. 1).In addition to shale, it is worth noting that offshore production in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) has also been on the rebound, having increased every year since 2013: GOM crude oil production averaged 1.9 MMbbl/d, also a ne