Yesterday’s weekly EIA inventory report showed a 14.4 million-barrel build to oil inventories, the largest since weekly records began in 1982. Here at ClipperData, we use U.S. Customs bills to report oil imports in a timely fashion. Imports play a key role in the weekly inventory data, making a major contribution to supply, and unsurprisingly, have a big influence on inventory numbers. Comparing our numbers to those reported by the EIA shows their import data lagging behind the totals reported for the weeks ending October 14 and October 21, and then playing catch-up in the last week, the one ending October 28. In the two weeks prior, the EIA reported import numbers into the U.S. Gulf coast that were significantly below the Customs totals. For the week ending October 14, EIA imports into PADD 3 were 550,000 barrels per day below the Customs number, and 116,000 bpd below for […]