EIA expects US oil production to average 13.83mln BPD in August, (vs 13.82mln BPD in July), and forecasts 13.77mln BPD in September

• Projects US natural gas production to average 122.6 bcf per day in August (vs 122.0 bcf per day in July), and forecasts 123.2 bcf per day in September.

This is the EIA's monthly drilling productivity read on the shale basins, and the pattern in such prints is well established: marginal month-on-month revisions of this size rarely move crude on their own, serving instead as confirmation or contradiction of the prevailing supply narrative built from rig counts, well completions and the weekly production estimates. The historically more informative signal has been the split between the crude outlook and the associated gas outlook, since rising gas output from the oil-directed basins has tended to pressure gas benchmarks at the margin even when the crude trajectory is flat, a divergence that has mattered repeatedly in past shale cycles. The actors to track are the Permian operators, whose productivity per rig has historically set whether these EIA averages prove conservative or generous. The follow-ons are the weekly petroleum status report for where the agency plugs its estimates against observed supply, and the next short-term energy outlook for whether the forecast curve is revised. As a scheduled projection rather than a surprise, the print is context rather than catalyst.