Drawing on growing output from the Bakken and Eagle Ford shale plays, U.S. crude production averaged 6.4 million barrels a day last year, a gain of 800,000 barrels daily over 2011 -- the largest annual increase since the birth of the U.S. oil industry in 1859, the Energy Information Administration said yesterday.

Two federal agencies have announced separate investigations into Royal Dutch Shell PLC's Arctic operations, a day after the company's drillship Kulluk was successfully pulled off the rocky shores of Alaska's Sitkalidak Island and towed to a port of refuge.