For First Time, Oil Likely To Be Top U.S. Export In 2023

For the first time in 50 years and perhaps ever, the primary oil category will be the United States’ top export when 2023 figures are released early next year.

That is according to my analysis of the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data, which runs through August.

Combined with refined petroleum, which ranks second, and natural gas products, which rank fourth, the United States has quietly gone in a few short years from an energy trade deficit to a surplus.

2023 will mark the fourth consecutive year the value of these three U.S. export categories topped the value of the same three import categories. This year, 54.36% of U.S. trade in oil, gasoline and natural gas has been an export.

Looking at just oil, the percentage growth has been more dramatic.

For the first time, exports in the primary oil category are accounting for more than 40% of all oil trade — exports as a percentage of exports plus imports. That’s a slight deficit. In 2016, that percentage was 8.50%.

The next year, in 2017, the value of U.S. oil exports first topped 1% of all U.S. exports. Through August of this year, that percentage is 5.61% of the more then 1,260 export categories our company, WorldCity, uses to classify export and import commodities.

(Now a quick aside as I go “into the weeds” for a moment. For those familiar with “harmonized tariff codes,” I use the data at the four-digit level. At the more specific 10-digit level, oil first ranked No. 1 in 2022. But that’s only because the refined petroleum category, dominated by gasoline, is broken down at the 10-digit level into more than 100 subcategories — leaded, unleaded, biodiesel, kerosene, jet fuel, etc. That is compared to just four for the oil category. It seems reasonable to me to compare oil to all refined petroleum products as opposed to just unleaded gasoline. )

Back to the rapid growth in U.S. oil exports. What changed the course was 2016 legislation allowing domestic oil to be exported, a practice that had been all but banned since the 1973 Arab oil embargo.

The value of U.S. oil exports through just eight months of 2023, $75.02 billion, is more than the total for any complete year ever except one: last year. In 2022, the total for oil was a record-setting $119.37 billion, a remarkable 71.71% percent increase over the record set the previous year, in 2021.

The 2023 total is likely to fall short of that. Through August, the value of oil exports is down 4.63% from the first eight months of 2022.

Looking at the nation’s seaports, the big winner in this transition is the Port of Corpus Christi, which has led the nation seven of the last nine years and soon to be eight of 10. The other two years, the leader was another Texas seaport, the Port of Houston.

Corpus Christi will finish 2023 with a majority of the value of oil exports for the third consecutive year. Through August, that percentage was 53.50%, the highest percentage to date.

In 2016, the year President Obama signed the legislation into law, Corpus Christi exports totaled $1.64 billion. The next year, with the law in full effect, the total was $5.86 billion, an increase of 257%. The next year, the increase was 85.33%.

In 2022, the value of oil exports from Corpus Christi was $62.81 billion, a far cry from the $1.64 billion just six years earlier.

The two biggest markets are Asia and Europe, not surprisingly.

Asia’s market share has grown from about 30% in 2017, the first full year of the legislation allowing for U.S. exports to about a third so far this year. This year China is the biggest market, at 11.61%. It had ranked first globally in 2019, at 13.70%.

Europe has come to capture additional market share of U.S. oil exports. Europe accounted for slightly more than 20% in 2017. So far this year, it accounts for slightly less than a third. The Netherlands, a European transshipment hub, ranks first in the world this year but has not ranked No. 1 for a full year to date.