Last year's oil imports more than half of U.S. supplies

WASHINGTON - Oil imports to the United States, a continual source of contention for the domestic oil and gas industry, broke a record last year by climbing to 51 percent of U.S. supplies, according to the American Petroleum Institute. (Editor's note: Imports climbed to 55% in September, 1998)

Combined imports of crude oil and petroleum products rose by 6 percent over 1995, hitting an average of 9.36 million barrels per day.

It was the greatest increase since 1993, partly reflecting ''a more rapid drawdown in inventories in 1995 than occurred in 1996,'' said Edward H. Murphy, API's director finance, accounting and statistics.

Factoring in the higher drawdown rate, he said the ''underlying annual rate of increase ... is now closer to 4 percent.''

Imports narrowly exceeded the import record of 50.7 percent of U.S. supplies in 1994.

The level had slipped slightly to 49l8 percent in 1995.

''We believe that our increased dependence on foreign sources of petroleum is at least partly avoidable since, with a more enlightened (federal) leasing policy, we could be producing a good part of this oil domestically,'' said Murphy at a briefing on 1996 industry trends.

''However, as other Western Hemisphere countries increase their production, at least more of our imports are coming from these sources,'' he said.''We estimate that slightly more than 50 percent of our imports were from Western Hemisphere countries last year and 17 percent from the Persian Gulf producers.''

The trend has been promising since as recently as five years ago, only 40 percent came from Western Hemisphere countries last year and 17 percent from the Persian Gulf producers.''