The pace of U.S. oil production growth will begin to slow in 2015, even as global demand continues to rise, allowing OPEC to pump more crude for the first time in three years, U.S. government forecasts showed on Tuesday. In its first projections for 2015, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said U.S. output will rise by 9 percent or 750,000 barrels per day next year to reach 9.3 million bpd, the highest in 43 years. That rate may seem heady but is less than the breakneck 1 million bpd growth seen last year and forecast for 2014, the result of the biggest oil boom in a generation as fracking and horizontal drilling technologies make millions of barrels in domestic on-shore oil reserves more accessible. The data arm of the U.S. Department of Energy, like many other analysts, has consistently underestimated the […]