Sep. 2--U.S. crude oil production is expected to rise this year for the first time in nearly two decades, buoyed mostly by new offshore projects in the Gulf of Mexico but also getting a boost from a so-far quiet Atlantic hurricane season.

Last year, hurricanes Ike and Gustav forced oil and gas companies to shut down wells and evacuate workers from offshore facilities, resulting in 63 million barrels of lost oil production. This year, the government predicts only 3.4 million barrels of outages due to Gulf storms, although hurricane season is still far from over.

U.S. oil output is benefiting from the addition of major deep-water fields, including BP's Thunder Horse, that are helping offset production declines onshore and in shallower Gulf waters. In many cases, these deep-water fields were discovered years ago but are only now coming on line, given the massive costs and technical challenges associated with them.

The combination of favorable factors should lift U.S. crude oil production to an average of 5.22 million barrels per day in 2009, up from 4.95 million barrels per day last year and the first annual increase since 1991, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

And the trend may continue beyond 2009, said Bob Fryklund, oil analyst with IHS-CERA in Houston, noting a queue of deep-water Gulf discoveries that will be coming onstream soon.

"For the next couple of years, oil production looks like it will be on an upward swing, which we haven't seen -- it's been a long time," he said.

The rise in domestic oil production highlights the growing contribution of deep-water fields in the Gulf, which until only recently were considered out of reach.

It also comes as U.S. natural gas production, which has been trending upward for several years, is slowing amid an unprecedented collapse in prices and demand, which has spurred producers to curtail output.

Since December, natural gas prices have plummeted from nearly $6 per million British thermal units, recently hitting a seven-year low around $2.80, while crude oil prices have more than doubled to near $70 a barrel.

Yet it may be too early to call it a turning point for U.S. oil. While deep-water fields, as well as emerging onshore fields like the Bakken oil shale play in North Dakota, are sure to become a bigger part of America's oil diet, they may not be enough to offset declining production elsewhere in the U.S. Nor will they help the country wean itself from foreign oil any time soon.