Distribution of global oil production 2010-2018

The Middle East produces more oil than any other region in the world. It accounted for more than a third of global oil production in 2018, at 33.5 percent. Overall, the Middle Eastern oil production makes up a slightly larger share of global production than it did ten years ago, but the distribution of oil production has risen most consistently in North America, while declining in all other regions.

Shifts in North American oil production

Over the past decade, higher oil production in North America has largely been driven by the United States. Since the 2008 financial crisis, oil production in the United States alone has nearly doubled. Canadian crude oil production has been relatively consistent in comparison.

U.S. oil after the financial crisis

Oil prices from OPEC countries, many of which are in the Middle East, had been rising in the years leading up to the global recession and peaked in 2008. As a result, the United States decreased oil imports, and investors capitalized on lower interest rates to develop technologies such as hydraulic fracturing (fracking) that would allow domestic oil extraction from wells deep underground that were once too hard to reach.