Imports of crude oil to the U.S. Gulf Coast dived to their lowest level in almost three decades last week, due to OPEC’s production cuts, unusually low Iraqi shipments, and congestion on the Houston Ship Channel from a tank farm fire last month. According to weekly preliminary U.S. government data, cited by Bloomberg, the Gulf Coast’s crude imports were just 1.4 million bpd last week, with imports from Iraq at only 5,000 bpd. The shipments from Iraq were at their lowest since August 2015, when the U.S. didn’t import any Iraqi crude oil. The low volumes from Iraq, plus the Saudi tactic to focus on cutting exports to the U.S. in a bid to draw down the most transparently reported oil inventories in the world, resulted in U.S. imports from its top six suppliers from OPEC dropping to below 1 million bpd last week. This was the first time […]