Higher oil prices this year boosted U.S. oil production, and the U.S. oil industry played a large part in America’s impressive second quarter economic growth—the fastest growth since the third quarter of 2014. Real U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) rose at an annual rate of 4.1 percent in the second quarter of 2018, according to the ‘advance’ estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) on Friday. The first quarter of this year, by comparison, saw real GDP increase by 2.2 percent. The increase in real GDP in the second quarter of 2018 reflected positive contributions from personal consumption expenditures (PCE), exports, nonresidential fixed investment, federal government spending, and state and local government spending that were partly offset by negative contributions from private inventory investment and residential fixed investment, BEA said. Nonresidential private fixed investment in mining exploration, shafts, and wells jumped to US$129.4 billion this past quarter, […]