US Oil Imports by Country, Explained

1. The answer first: the supplier table

Ask where America's imported oil comes from and the common answers point at the Middle East. The EIA's data points at the 49th parallel. The Weekly Petroleum Status Report prints a crude imports table by country of origin, with each supplier's share calculated from the most recent full calendar year. For 2024, the shares were:

The top ten sum to 93.5 percent, and the structure inside that sum is the story. The Americas supply about four fifths of US crude imports. The five OPEC members in the table sum to 14.3 percent, about one barrel in seven. And the flow is not small: in the latest week archived on this site, the week ending October 9, 2026, US crude imports ran at 7,571 thousand barrels a day beside domestic production of 13,679 thousand, so imports were about 36 percent of the two streams combined. Our trade routes page maps the sea lanes these cargoes travel, and the global oil hub places the US among producers and consumers worldwide.

2. Canada: the pipeline supplier that rewrote the table

Canada's 59.9 percent is not a market outcome that resets each year; it is infrastructure. Alberta's oil sands produce heavy crude in volumes Canada's own refineries cannot absorb, and cross-border pipelines deliver it directly to the US Midwest, the Rockies, and onward to the Gulf Coast. The Midwest refining region (PADD 2 in the district system) is effectively an extension of the Alberta market, and imports from Canada rose on average about 4 percent a year from 2013 to 2023 in the EIA's account. In July 2024, after the Trans Mountain expansion entered service in May and tripled that line's capacity, US imports of Canadian crude reached a record 4.3 million barrels a day, and US West Coast imports at 498,000 barrels a day were also a record, 115 percent above the year before, as Pacific refiners took the new coastal volumes. The discount at which the landlocked Canadian grade trades against WTI is the subject of our WCS-WTI differential explainer; the import table is where that discount does its work, pulling barrels south by pipe.

3. Why the largest producer imports at all: the grade mismatch

The United States produces more crude oil than any other country and still imports roughly six to seven million barrels a day of it. The resolution is that crude oil is not one substance. US shale output is overwhelmingly light and sweet: low density, low sulfur, easy to refine. Much of the US refining fleet, above all the big complex plants on the Gulf Coast, was built and rebuilt over decades to run heavy, sour crude: dense, high-sulfur barrels from Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, and the Middle East, processed in cokers and hydrocrackers that turn cheap heavy feed into high-value light products. A complex refinery fed only light shale crude leaves expensive equipment idle and yields too much of the light end. So the two streams coexist by design: heavy crude flows in for the complex plants, surplus light crude flows out to simpler refineries abroad, and refined products flow out on top of both. Imports by country are, underneath the politics, a refinery configuration table.

Geography layers on grade. The East Coast (PADD 1) has limited pipeline connections to US fields and a refining fleet oriented to waterborne supply, so it imports crude and products across the Atlantic even in years of national surplus. The West Coast (PADD 5) is an island market, cut off by the Rockies, supplied by Alaska, California fields, and tankers from the Pacific, now including Canadian barrels through the expanded Trans Mountain line. A national total that nets to near balance is built from regional markets that are each structurally long or short, which is why the country table and the district table have to be read together.

4. The weekly table versus the annual structure

The EIA prints the country split weekly, and the weekly columns swing hard enough to mislead anyone who reads them as structure. In the weekly table for the week ending June 27, 2025, the four week average for Canada was 3,613 thousand barrels a day, close to its structural level. Mexico's four week average was 415 thousand, well under the pace its 11.3 percent annual share implies, because Mexican export volumes have been falling as its own refining system claims more of its crude. Nigeria printed 419 thousand barrels a day in that single week, against a four week average of 226 thousand: one or two tanker arrivals landing inside the week boundary. These are cargo-timing artifacts, and the EIA labels the weekly table preliminary for that reason. The monthly Petroleum Supply Monthly restates the flows, and the annual Petroleum Supply Annual fixes the shares the weekly table borrows. Read the weekly table for direction, the annual table for fact, and never annualize a single week of a small supplier.

5. The moving rows: Venezuela, Mexico, and the rotation rule

The top ten list is re-based every year on the prior year's volumes, and its churn tells the recent history of the hemisphere. Venezuela, once a foundational Gulf Coast supplier, collapsed to a fraction of its former flow under sanctions and production decline. Licensed resumption returned it to the annual table at a 2.0 percent share for 2024, arriving in tanker-sized cargoes that still leave many individual weekly prints empty. Mexico, the number two supplier, is in slow decline as a crude exporter, its weekly prints running far below its annual share through 2025. New offshore producers rotate in as their fields ramp: the list the EIA uses is a trailing snapshot, not a permanent roster, and a supplier can matter in the monthly data before it earns a weekly row. The stable fact across all the churn is the one at the top of the table: Canada's share has done nothing but grow, because pipelines do not move.

6. Mistakes this data invites

• Equating imports with OPEC dependence. OPEC members supplied 14.3 percent of US crude imports in 2024. Canada alone supplied more than four times that. Commentary that treats US supply as hostage to OPEC decisions is working from a 1970s map.
• Confusing crude imports with total petroleum trade. This page is crude oil only. The United States also imports and exports large volumes of refined products, natural gas liquids, and biofuels, and the total petroleum balance is a different, roughly balanced picture.
• Reading one weekly print as a trend. A small supplier's weekly figure is a count of tankers that happened to dock. The four week average exists to absorb exactly that lumpiness.
• Assuming imports mean domestic production failed. The flows are driven by crude quality and refinery configuration. The US imports heavy barrels it chooses to run and exports light barrels it chooses to sell, in the same week, at a profit on both legs.
• Treating the top ten as the whole story. About 6.5 percent of 2024 crude imports came from outside the top ten, a tail of occasional and emerging suppliers that the annual re-basing keeps redrawing.

7. Frequently asked questions

Which country supplies the most crude oil to the United States?

Canada, by a wide margin. In the EIA's annual shares for 2024, Canada supplied 59.9 percent of US crude oil imports, roughly three barrels in five. Mexico was second at 11.3 percent, and Saudi Arabia third at 5.4 percent. The ranking reflects pipelines and refinery design as much as geology: Canadian heavy crude moves by pipe directly into the Midwest and Gulf Coast refineries built to run it.

How much of US oil imports come from OPEC?

About one barrel in seven. Adding the EIA's 2024 shares for the OPEC members in the top ten (Saudi Arabia 5.4 percent, Iraq 3.3, Nigeria 2.4, Venezuela 2.0, and Libya 1.2) gives 14.3 percent of US crude oil imports. The popular picture of US supply depending on OPEC is decades out of date; the dominant foreign supplier is Canada, which is not an OPEC member.

Why does the United States import oil when it is the world's largest producer?

Because grade and location matter more than totals. US production is mostly light, sweet crude from shale. A large share of US refining capacity, especially on the Gulf Coast, was built for heavy, sour crude, and heavy grades still arrive most cheaply from Canada and Latin America. At the same time the US exports light crude its complex refineries do not need. Imports and exports are two different streams of different oils, not a contradiction.

Why do weekly import figures swing so much?

Cargo timing. Seaborne imports arrive in tanker-sized lumps, and a vessel counted in one week instead of the next moves the weekly figure by hundreds of thousands of barrels a day for smaller suppliers. The EIA's weekly country table is preliminary, and the four week averages printed beside it exist precisely to smooth the lumpiness. Monthly Petroleum Supply Monthly figures, and the annual Petroleum Supply Annual, are the settled record.

Where do the import numbers come from?

From the EIA. The Weekly Petroleum Status Report carries a preliminary table of crude imports by country of origin for the top ten suppliers of the most recent full year, with shares calculated from that year's Petroleum Supply Annual. The monthly and annual EIA publications restate the flows on a fuller basis. The country list itself is re-based each year on the prior year's volumes, so rising suppliers rotate in and fading ones rotate out.

Does the United States import crude oil from Russia?

Russian crude is absent from the EIA's top ten supplier table and from the annual shares on this page, which are dominated by Canada and the Americas. Readers checking the current position should use the EIA monthly imports data, which records flows by country of origin as they occur.

8. Related reading

• Oil Trade Routes and Chokepoints - the sea lanes and straits the tanker-borne share of these imports travels.
• WCS-WTI Differential, Explained - the Canadian grade at the top of the table, and why it prices at a discount.
• PADD Districts, Explained - the five regions that decide which imports land where.
• OPEC+, Explained - the producer group behind about one imported barrel in seven.
• Global Oil Data - production, consumption, and trade for 77 countries, the wider frame for this table.
• How to Read the EIA Weekly Petroleum Status Report - the weekly report whose imports table this page is built from.

Data and sources: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) - Weekly Petroleum Status Report, crude oil imports by country of origin table (Table 8), as published in 2025 editions and read October 21, 2026: supplier shares calculated from the last full calendar year of the Petroleum Supply Annual (2024: Canada 59.9 percent, Mexico 11.3, Saudi Arabia 5.4, Iraq 3.3, Colombia 3.1, Brazil 2.9, Nigeria 2.4, Venezuela 2.0, Ecuador 2.0, Libya 1.2; shares computed from annualized import data and may not sum due to rounding; the all other countries share is the remainder); weekly four week averages for the week ending June 27, 2025 (Canada 3,613, Mexico 415, Saudi Arabia 263, Brazil 283, Nigeria 226, Iraq 173, Colombia 172, Ecuador 113, Libya 102, Venezuela 99 thousand barrels per day; single week Nigeria 419 thousand). EIA analysis of Canadian imports, October 30, 2024, as reported in trade press coverage read October 21, 2026 (record 4.3 million barrels per day from Canada in July 2024 after the Trans Mountain expansion entered service in May 2024 at nearly three times the line's previous 300,000 barrel per day capacity; US West Coast crude imports of 498,000 barrels per day in July 2024, a record, up 115 percent year over year; Canadian imports rising on average about 4 percent a year from 2013 to 2023). Latest week import and production figures are computed at build time from the PetroEyes archive of EIA weekly data (file updated October 19, 2026). All other figures are as published by the sources named, for the periods stated.