U.S. crude oil imports fell 5% in 2012 to a 15-year
low of 8.492 million barrels a day, data released Wednesday by the U.S.
Energy Information Administration show.
The drop of 443,000 barrels a day was the biggest since 2009
and put imports at more than 16%, or 1.6 million barrels a day, below
the peak hit in 2005.
The drop in imports follows a 3%, or 278,000-barrel-a-day, decline in 2011 and comes as U.S. domestic oil output has surged.
In December, crude-oil imports fell 13% from a year earlier,
to 7.576 million barrels a day, the lowest in any month since February
1997. Imports fell 6.8% from the November level, the biggest
month-to-month decline since February 2011.
Canada, the top supplier in each month since March 2006, held
that position, shipping 2.5 million barrels a day of crude to the U.S.
in December, the most since February 2012. For all the full year,
crude-oil supply from Canada was up 8.2% at a record 2.4 million barrels
a day.
Saudi Arabia, which aggressively ramped up output to supplies
lost to the Iranian oil sanctions, shipped its highest volume of crude
oil to the U.S. since 2008 last year, and remained the second-biggest
supplier to the U.S. after Canada.
In December, though, imports of Saudi crude dropped 20% from a
year earlier and were the lowest since February 2010. Venezuela
supplies were up 30% year-on-year in the month and topped the Saudi
level. Venezuela's December performance put it in second-place among top
suppliers for the first time since June 2009.
Mexico's amid a struggle to arrest declining oil output, recorded a 12% year-on-year drop in U.S. imports of its crude.
Rising output of domestic light, sweet crude oil and a
slowdown in refining in the Northeast U.S., its traditional market, saw
demand for similar-quality West African crude oil drop sharply in 2012.
Nigeria, which had ranked as the fifth-top crude supplier to
the U.S. in 2011, dropped to sixth place last year. Crude imports from
Nigeria fell by nearly half, to 405,000 barrels a day, the lowest annual
level since 1985.
Angola, dropped from eighth to ninth place, as imports fell to the lowest annual level since 1988.