US and Americas Challenge to Middle East Oil Supremacy Won't Stop

For a few weeks of 2026, the American continent was pumping nearly half of the world’s oil. It was an extraordinary moment, even if short lived. To a degree, it was a statistical aberration, a fortuitous byproduct of the Iran war, which had shut down much of the Persian Gulf’s energy industry. But it was also a very real indicator of a boom that has moved the oil market’s center of gravity away from the Middle East.