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US in 2020 renewed 10-year record for oil import from Russia

MOSCOW, March 25. /TASS/. The United States imported the largest volume of oil and petroleum products from Russia since 2011 in 2020, according to data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the US Department of Energy. The volume of imports of Russian oil and petroleum products last year amounted to 538,000 barrels per day. The US imported bigger volume only in 2011, when the figure reached 624,000 barrels per day.

However, the leading exporters of oil and oil products to the United States in 2020 were Canada (4.1 mln barrels per day) and Mexico (750,000 barrels per day).

Demand for Russian oil in the United States is growing amid the reduction of supplies from Saudi Arabia. In recent years Saudi Arabia increasingly reoriented its supplies to the more premium Asian market. In addition, American refineries use Russian oil to replace oil from Venezuela, which has been under US sanctions since 2018. Most of the American refineries are designed to process heavy Venezuelan oil. According to its characteristics, it can be replaced by Russian crude.

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