(Bloomberg) – EOG Resources Inc., one of the biggest independent shale producers, expects U.S. crude production to grow at less than half of last year’s pace amid lower drilling activity in oil fields.

After ending last year with an estimated production growth of 900,000 bpd higher than the end of 2022, U.S. oil expansion will be “considerably less,” EOG President Billy Helms said Thursday in a presentation to investors.

“Bringing on a lot of production last year, you’ve got a steeper decline to offset this next year,” he said. “That tells you that US production is not going to be able to continue to grow at the pace that it did last year.”

Drillers from the Permian basin in West Texas to the Bakken shale of North Dakota ramped up oil production well beyond what analysts foresaw last year, pushing output to a record just as OPEC and its allies put the brakes on supplies to arrest price declines. Helms said EOG expects to report roughly 3% growth in its 2023 oil proudction when posting fourth-quarter earnings in the coming weeks.

EOG doesn’t see the need to increase activity, mainly in its core regions this year, but may expand drilling in its emerging Utica Shale fields located across Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, Helms sai