"The United States increased its proved reserves of oil and natural gas, establishing new records in 2018 according to a recently released EIA report," EIA Administrator Linda Capuano said in the statement. "Crude oil and lease condensate increased by 12 percent from 2017, and natural gas climbed 9 percent during the same reporting period."
The EIA’s "US Crude Oil and Natural Gas Proved Reserves Year-End 2018" report said the discoveries were helped by the increases in oil and natural gas prices.
Crude oil prices were mostly strong through September 2018 before falling sharply in the fourth quarter because of fears of a glut in supply. Gas prices saw a mixed performance through July before a sharp rally through November, broken by a year-end sell-off.
Proved US crude oil and condensate reserves increased by 5.1 billion barrels last year from 2017 to reach 47.1 billion barrels while natural gas reserves rose by 40.2 trillion cubic feet to 504.5 trillion cubic feet, the report said.
Proved reserves are those volumes of oil and natural gas that geological and engineering data demonstrate with reasonable certainty to be recoverable in future years from known reservoirs under existing economic and operating conditions, according to the report.