Menu
Crude oil, gasoline, heating oil, diesel, propane, and other liquids including biofuels and natural gas liquids.
Exploration and reserves, storage, imports and exports, production, prices, sales.
Sales, revenue and prices, power plants, fuel use, stocks, generation, trade, demand & emissions.
Energy use in homes, commercial buildings, manufacturing, and transportation.
Reserves, production, prices, employment and productivity, distribution, stocks, imports and exports.
Includes hydropower, solar, wind, geothermal, biomass and ethanol.
Uranium fuel, nuclear reactors, generation, spent fuel.
Comprehensive data summaries, comparisons, analysis, and projections integrated across all energy sources.
Monthly and yearly energy forecasts, analysis of energy topics, financial analysis, congressional reports.
Financial market analysis and financial data for major energy companies.
Greenhouse gas data, voluntary reporting, electric power plant emissions.
Maps, tools, and resources related to energy disruptions and infrastructure.
State energy information, including overviews, rankings, data, and analyses.
Maps by energy source and topic, includes forecast maps.
International energy information, including overviews, rankings, data, and analyses.
Regional energy information including dashboards, maps, data, and analyses.
Tools to customize searches, view specific data sets, study detailed documentation, and access time-series data.
EIA's free and open data available as API, Excel add-in, bulk files, and widgets
Come test out some of the products still in development and let us know what you think!
EIA's open source code, available on GitHub.
Forms EIA uses to collect energy data including descriptions, links to survey instructions, and additional information.
Sign up for email subscriptions to receive messages about specific EIA products
Subscribe to feeds for updates on EIA products including Today in Energy and What's New.
Short, timely articles with graphics on energy, facts, issues, and trends.
Lesson plans, science fair experiments, field trips, teacher guide, and career corner.
In 2020, fossil fuel production in the United States declined by an estimated 6% from the 2019 record high of 81.3 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu). Based on forecasts in the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) January 2021 Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), EIA expects total production of fossil fuels in the United States to remain flat in 2021 as increased coal production offsets declines in natural gas production. EIA expects production of all fossil fuels—crude oil, coal, dry natural gas, and natural gas plant liquids (NGPL)—to increase in 2022, but forecast fossil fuel production will remain lower than the 2019 peak.
EIA’s surveys measure fossil fuel production in physical units, such as cubic feet for natural gas, barrels for crude oil, and short tons for coal. In this article, energy production is expressed in heat content units to allow comparisons across fuel types. On a heat-content basis, dry natural gas accounted for the largest share of fossil fuel production in 2020, at 46%. Crude oil accounted for 31%, coal for 14%, and NGPLs for 9%.
From the mid-1980s through 2010, coal was the leading source of U.S. fossil fuel production, but coal production has since been surpassed by dry natural gas (in 2011) and by crude oil (in 2015). In 2020, the United States produced twice as much energy from crude oil (24 quadrillion Btu) than coal (11 quadrillion Btu) and three times as much energy from natural gas (35 quadrillion Btu).
U.S. coal production fell by an estimated 24% in 2020, but according to EIA’s forecast, U.S. coal production will increase by 12% in 2021 and another 4% in 2022. In recent years, about 90% of U.S. coal has been consumed by the electric power sector. In EIA’s forecast, increases in natural gas prices are expected to reduce natural gas consumption for electricity generation, which will result in an increased share for coal—and to a lesser extent, an increased share for renewables such as wind and solar—in the electricity generation mix.
EIA estimates that U.S. NGPL production increased by 7% in 2020. Newly commissioned, more efficient natural gas processing plants supported growth in NGPL production even though natural gas production declined. EIA expects domestic NGPL production to increase by 2% in 2021 and by 7% in 2022 mostly because of ethane production growth.
Principal contributor: Stacy MacIntyre
Tags: production/supply, coal, natural gas, liquid fuels, crude oil, oil/petroleum
