U.S. Produced Most Oil Ever in 2012, But Energy Consumption Slowed Globally, Report Says

Production of crude oil in the United States in 2012 grew to more than one million barrels a day, the largest increase among the world's oil producing countries and the largest oil production increase in U.S. history.

The rise of oil production in the U.S. is noteworthy, BP's chief economist Christof Ruhl told the BBC, "because it was created in the U.S. not by accident but because the U.S. has the kind of competitive environment in energy markets which make these things possible. It's not by accident, in other words, that higher production didn't come out of Venezuela or China or the Middle East where investment is more restricted."

The data comes from the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, an annual report from the oil giant, and also indicated that overall, global energy consumption was up by 1.8 percent in 2012, a slightly smaller increase than was seen in 2011. Consumption growth of all forms of fossil energy was below average, according to the report.

Brazil, China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia and the United States all saw below-average growth in energy consumption, the report stated.

"The year 2012 saw a slowdown in the growth of energy consumption globally, partly as a result of the economic slowdown but also because individuals and businesses have responded to high prices by becoming more efficient in their use of energy," wrote Bob Dudley, BP CEO.

Japan, which took the majority of its nuclear power stations offline in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima incident, contributed to the largest annual decline in nuclear output the world has seen.

Another shift in patterns revealed by the data show that coal consumption is shifting hands worldwide. 

For the second year is a row, coal is being crowded out in the U.S. energy market by cheaper shale gas. The coal is exported to Europe where it is burned for power generation and Europe's stores of natural gas get sent to Asia, Ruhl told the BBC.

"At the end of the day what happens is that in the U.S. carbon emissions falls stronger than in Europe because coal is replaced with gas in power generation," which generates about half of the CO2 emissions as coal, he said.