RE:US continues to import oil while not consuming US produced o
it's simply because many US refineries are geared up to produce heavy oil and US produces very little heavy, hence the need to import it. A couple other factors - the US is now able to export crude and this puts upward pressure on overall inventory, especially in the gulf (geographically that is where most of the build is). Another factor is pipelines - the oil in pipelines is counted as inventory so everytime a pipeline opens there is more pipeline inventory, which is essentially permanent inventory that will never decline. So when they talk of 530m barrels of record inventory, it's not like the glut is 530m barrels since much of the inventory is not really usable. So say 5 years ago inventory was 300m, it's not like we will ever get back to this level. A normal level of inventory might be closer to 450m.