A Marathon Petroleum Corporation oil refinery in Carson, California, on March 10, 2026. (David McNew/Getty Images)

The military conflict in Iran led to higher gasoline prices in the United States and around the world. In a Pew Research Center survey conducted in late March, 69% of U.S. adults said they were extremely or very concerned about higher fuel prices as a result of the war.

With these costs on many Americans’ minds in recent months, here’s a closer look at U.S. oil production and consumption trends, based on data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the International Energy Agency (IEA) and other sources.

About this research

This Pew Research Center analysis examines global oil production and consumption, with a focus on the U.S., over the long term and during the ongoing conflict with Iran.

Why did we do this? How did we do this?

This analysis uses data from the International Energy Agency and the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The U.S. is the world’s top producer of crude oil. The U.S. has long been among the top three crude oil producers globally, along with Russia and Saudi Arabia. But it took over the top spot in 2018 and has remained there since, according to the EIA.

This change is mostly due to the expansion of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking – a technique used to extract oil and natural gas from rock. Fracking infrastructure in the U.S. greatly expanded after the 2000s, increasing production of both types of fuel.

The U.S. is also the world’s top producer of petroleum products, such as gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and the petrochemical feedstocks used to make plastics and other materials, as well as the top producer of natural gas and natural gas liquids.

The U.S. is the world’s leading oil consumer, in addition to being the top producer. Since 1998, the U.S. consistently has accounted for about 20% or more of the world’s oil consumption, according to the EIA.

The U.S. has been rivaled only recently by China. Since 1998, Chinese oil consumption has risen from about 4 million barrels per day to about 17 million, and it now accounts for about 16% of the global total. (The European Union is not aggregated in EIA data, but its total demand still falls below that of the U.S. and China.)

Chinese oil consumption is expected to peak in 2027, driven by the rapid adoption of electric vehicles, high-speed rail expansion and natural-gas-powered trucking. For the first time in 2025, more than half of all new cars sold in China (53%) were electric vehicles or hybrids.

The U.S. now accounts for about 16% of global crude oil production, up from about 7% in the mid-2000s. The U.S. share of the crude oil market is at its highest point since the 1980s.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), a group of 11 countries that coordinate their petroleum policies, accounted for roughly 35% of global crude oil production in 2025.

In 2016, another 10 oil-producing countries – including Russia – signed an agreement with OPEC to form OPEC+. Combined, this broader group produced 55% of the world’s crude oil last year.

On May 1, 2026, the United Arab Emirates –  which alone accounted for about 4% of global crude oil production in 2025 – officially exited OPEC.

While the U.S. is the world’s leading crude oil producer, it still relies on oil from other countries. The U.S. imports more crude oil than it exports, making it a net importer. In 2025, it brought in a net total of about 2.2 million barrels per day, most of it (57%) from Canada.

The U.S. also often needs different types of oil than it produces. Most U.S. oil is light shale oil, whereas most of the nation’s refineries are optimized for heavy crude oil that needs to be imported.

Other factors also help explain why the U.S. is a net importer of oil. Geographic and logistical considerations, for example, sometimes make it cheaper for refineries to import from a foreign source than from a U.S. oil field.

Even as the U.S. remains a net importer of crude oil, imports have fallen considerably since the mid-2000s as domestic production has grown. U.S. exports of crude oil, in turn, began rising sharply after 2010, from 42,000 barrels per day to about 4 million per day in 2025.

The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve is at its lowest level since the early 1980s as a result of recent shocks to the oil market. The reserve is an emergency stockpile of crude oil that has existed since 1975 (though EIA data only goes back to 1982).

As the price of oil surged in 2022, then-President Joe Biden ordered the largest-ever release of oil from the reserve: 180 million barrels over a roughly seven-month period.

On March 11 of this year, shortly after the start of the Iran war, President Donald Trump announced the second-largest withdrawal: 172 million barrels over a four-month period. The ongoing release has brought the reserve to its lowest level since 1983 – about half of what it had just five years ago – and is expected to bring inventory to its lowest point since data collection started.

Historically, these oil withdrawals have been much smaller. The IEA says it has launched its biggest-ever global release of emergency oil stocks in response to what it calls the “largest supply disruption in history.”

The U.S. is less reliant on oil from the Middle East than many Asian and African countries.

By volume, the U.S. is the seventh-largest importer of Middle Eastern oil. By share, however, the U.S. is considerably less exposed, according to the IEA. In 2024, just 3% of the oil consumed in the U.S. came from the Middle East, down from 8% in 2017.

Many other countries, especially in Asia and Africa, relied far more heavily on Middle Eastern oil in 2024. In Japan, for example, nearly 80% of all domestic consumption involved oil from the region.

Related: Dozens of countries have lowered energy taxes or taken other policy steps in response to Iran war