The United States has seen a “reversal” in oil production which could see it become bigger exporter than Saudi Arabia, it was claimed today.

Saudi Arabia is the world’s second largest exporter of oil, according to the International Energy Agency’s 2010 statistics, sending out 50 million tonnes a year.

The United States has currently undergone a dramatic change in energy fortune in the last five years with the boom in shale gas – and a similar change could be about to hit its oil market according to Rick Smead, a director at consultancy Navigant which helped bring research on the shale gas reserves to light.

He said the USA’s oil production is longer dwindling but on the rise again.

Speaking at the UGOS conference in London today, he predicted: “The US may exceed Saudi Arabia in a few years.”

He suggested the population of the state of North Dakota had recently “doubled” because of shale oil and gas production and predicted “big geopolitical implications”.