Energy prices—along with other globally traded commodities, equities, and currencies—were more volatile in the second quarter of 2025 (2Q25) amid significant uncertainty from concerns over economic growth as well as geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. The geopolitical uncertainty has affected crude oil prices and refinery margins, and shifting government policies have affected biofuel compliance credit prices.

Electricity demand in the Lower 48 states exceeded previous peaks on two days in the last week of July.

In our recently published Annual Energy Outlook 2025 (AEO2025), we introduced our new Hydrogen Market Module (HMM), which allows us to model the market for hydrogen in the coming decades.

In our most recent Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), we forecast nationwide U.S. retail electricity sales to ultimate customers will grow at an annual rate of 2.2% in both 2025 and 2026, compared with average growth of 0.8% between 2020 and 2024. The forecast reflects rapid electricity demand growth in Texas and several mid-Atlantic states, where the grid is managed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) and the PJM Interconnection, respectively. We expect electricity demand in ERCOT to grow at an average rate of 11% in 2025 and 2026 while the PJM region grows by 4%.

The value of energy trade between the United States and Canada remained steady in 2024 at an estimated $151 billion compared with $154 billion in 2023, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Energy trade value is the total value of energy imports and exports between two countries and is driven by commodity volumes and prices. Most of the U.S.-Canada trade value is U.S. energy imports from Canada—$124 billion in 2024—rather than from U.S. energy exports to Canada, which totaled $27 billion last year.

In our Annual Energy Outlook 2025 (AEO2025), we project regional differences in natural gas markets will encourage increased natural gas flows from the mid-Atlantic to the southern Gulf Coast in the coming decades. Across the cases we explored, we project production from the Appalachian Basin in the mid-Atlantic and Ohio region will increasingly meet growing demand on the Gulf Coast in the South Central region, driven largely by increasing liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports. The economics of increased production in the Appalachian Basin are more favorable by 2030, and our model shows natural gas transiting through the Eastern Midwest region on the way to the Gulf Coast.

Crude oil production from onshore federal lands has increased in recent years as a result of significant growth in drilling activity and operations. According to data collected by the U.S. Department of the Interior's Office of Natural Resources Revenue, onshore crude oil production from federal lands reached 1.7 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2024, a record high. Most of this growth was in New Mexico from crude oil produced from federal lands in the Permian Basin.

The average historical volatility of the daily Henry Hub front-month futures price, a key benchmark for U.S. natural gas, trended downward through the first half of the year, with quarterly volatility falling from a recent high of 81% in the fourth quarter of 2024 to 69% by mid-2025. This decline marks a return to more typical seasonal patterns and reflects greater market stability as storage inventories return to levels close to the prior five-year average. Since 2022, natural gas markets have experienced a series of extremes, including both unusually high and low inventory levels, which contributed to elevated price volatility. Recent quarters, by contrast, have seen more seasonally consistent price movements, suggesting that natural gas market dynamics have steadied amid record storage injections and more balanced inventories.

We expect U.S. coal-fired power plants will remain relatively well-stocked through the end of next year in our latest Short-Term Energy Outlook. We estimate power plants in the United States had 124 million short tons of coal on-site at the end of June for them to consume that coal at a rate of about 1.3 million short tons per day, meaning they had about 93 days' worth of fuel on-site. This metric, also called days of burn, is calculated by dividing coal inventories held at power plants by a seasonal consumption rate. We forecast days of burn will range between about 90 and 120 days between now through the end of 2026, or about a month's worth of coal more than power plants had on-site between 2019 and 2022.

The United States exported more crude oil to Nigeria than it received from Nigeria for the first time in February and March 2025. During this period, refinery maintenance on the U.S. East Coast drove down U.S. demand for crude oil imports, including imports from Nigeria, and the relatively new Dangote refinery in Nigeria drove up Nigeria's demand for inputs, including crude oil it imported from the United States. This marks the first time that the United States was a net crude oil exporter to Nigeria, and structural changes to crude oil trade between the countries suggest this dynamic could occur more frequently.

In 2024, France increased its cross-border electricity deliveries by 48%, from 70 terawatthours (TWh) in 2023 to 103 TWh in 2024. France's electricity exports to Belgium and Germany increased the most, but France also exported more electricity to Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Italy, according to data from the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity. Within France's electricity generation mix, nuclear energy increased the most, followed by hydropower.

In our recently published Annual Energy Outlook 2025 (AEO2025), we introduce our new Carbon Capture, Allocation, Transportation, and Sequestration module (CCATS), which allows us to model carbon capture in the coming decades.

U.S. proved reserves of crude oil and lease condensate totaled 46 billion barrels at year-end 2023, a 4% decline from the previous year's record, according to our U.S. Crude Oil and Natural Gas Proved Reserves, Year-End 2023 report. U.S. proved reserves of natural gas fell to 604 trillion cubic feet, a 13% decline from their 2022 record. Both declines marked the first annual decrease in U.S. proved reserves for those fuels since 2020.

Based on what power plant owners and operators have reported to EIA, the total operating capacity of U.S. coal-fired power plants is scheduled to fall from 172 gigawatts (GW) in May 2025 to 145 GW by the end of 2028, according to our Preliminary Monthly Electric Generator Inventory. On a regional basis, 58% of the planned coal capacity retirements are in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions.

In our Annual Energy Outlook 2025 (AEO2025), we project U.S. production growth of crude oil and natural gas remains relatively high through 2030 due to increasing U.S. exports of petroleum products and liquefied natural gas (LNG), as U.S. energy exports continue to be economical for international consumers.

California is set to lose 17% of its oil refinery capacity over the next 12 months because of two planned refinery closures. If realized, the closure of the facilities is likely to contribute to increases in fuel price volatility on the West Coast.

In 2024, the United States imported about 17% of its domestic energy supply, half of the record share set in 2006 and the lowest share since 1985, according to our Monthly Energy Review. The decline in imports' share of supply in the previous two decades is attributable to both an increase in domestic energy production and a decrease in energy imports since 2006.

In 2024, the United States consumed about 94 quadrillion British thermal units (quads) of energy, a 1% increase from 2023, according to our Monthly Energy Review. Fossil fuels—petroleum, natural gas, and coal—accounted for 82% of total U.S. energy consumption in 2024. Nonfossil fuel energy—from renewables and nuclear energy—accounted for the other 18%. Petroleum remained the most-consumed fuel in the United States, as it has been for the past 75 years, and nuclear energy consumption exceeded coal consumption for the first time ever.

According to our latest annual Refinery Capacity Report, U.S. operable atmospheric distillation capacity, the primary measure of refinery capacity, totaled 18.4 million barrels per calendar day (b/cd) on January 1, 2025-essentially flat compared with last year.

Electricity demand in the PJM Interconnection and ISO New England (two regional grid operators covering the Northeast United States) reached multiyear highs on June 23 and June 24, respectively. Electricity demand increased significantly due to a heat wave that affected most of the Eastern United States this week.