America Has A Long History Of Producing More Energy Than The Government Forecasts

If you're in favor of increased oil and gas production in the U.S., here's a nice problem to have: production keeps outpacing the Energy Department's estimates.

Each year, the Energy Information Administration releases tables showing how its forecasts compared to actual results.

For the past four years, the EIA's Annual Energy Outlooks have fallen modestly short for oil and way short for natural gas.

Here are the charts. Each number represents the given year's AEO (left column) for each of the 16 years it covers.

Oil: Starting with the AEO for 2009, projections have been short an average of -1.6 percent:

And for natural gas, they've been short an average of -4.9 percent — with projections for 2011 off as much as 15.4 percent:

As a result of this production spike, the EIA's price projections for natural gas (though not oil) were also off, by an average of 7.4 percent since 2009.