Russia overtook Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest crude producer in December 2016, when both countries started restricting supplies ahead of agreed cuts with other global producers to curb the worst glut in decades, Bloomberg reported.

As informed by RT, recent data from the Joint Organizations Data Initiative in Riyadh pointed out that Russia produced 10.49mb/d in December, down 29,000b/d from November. On the other hand, Saudi Arabia’s output dropped to 10.46mb/d, down from 10.72mb/d and Riyadh’s crude exports fell to 8mb/d from 8.26mb/d in November, the biggest monthly slide since May 2003.

This was the first time Russia became the top crude producer since March 2016.

The US was the third-largest producer at 8.8mb/d in December compared with 8.9mb/d in November, according to JODI. The growth in US production mostly came from the Texas’ Permian Basin and Eagle Ford regions, which have better quality oil. However, local refineries cannot process it, because they are geared to process poorer quality crude from Canada and Venezuela. The US producers export the higher quality oil and import what they need from abroad.

The data also show that Iraq came in fourth with 4.5mb/d of oil produced, followed by China at 3.98mb/d.