The U.S. set a new annual oil production record on December 15, based on data from the Energy Information Administration. Although the official monthly numbers from the EIA won’t be released for a couple of months, we can calculate that a new record has been set based on the following analysis. For reference, the previous record was set in 2019, the year before the Covid-19 pandemic impacted the oil industry. Total U.S. crude oil production in 2019 was 4.49 billion barrels (source), or 12.3 million barrels per day (BPD). Then the pandemic…