Germany imported so little crude oil last year than it has since 1992. A good 84.8 million tonnes of this important raw material, which is processed into fuel oil and fuel, were purchased from abroad in 2018, according to the Federal Statistical Office. Thus, the imported volume sank for the third year in a row: in 2016 it was still about 91.8 million tons, in 2017 just under 90 million tons. Most of the oil was imported in 2005, when it was 114.5 million tonnes.
According to the Federal Statistical Office, the reason for the decline is, on the one hand, the overall decline in final energy consumption and the considerable decline in the importance of heating oil.
The full report of the Federal Statistical Office can be found here.
By far the most important oil supplier for Germany is Russia. With around 29.2 million tonnes in 2018, Germany received a good third of its oil from there. Just under nine percent (about 7.6 million tons) came from Norway, and about 8.6 percent (about 7.3 million tons) of the total import volume from Libya. For all three supplier countries, however, the Federal Statistical Office as a whole is recording significantly lower delivery volumes.
By contrast, the USA has grown in importance. In the ranking of the most important supplier countries, the United States now ranks seventh. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), Saudi Arabia is the largest oil exporter in the world and has strong oil supplies for Germany lost in importance. Last year, Europe's largest economy took over 1.4 million tons of crude oil from there. That was just 1.7 percent of total crude oil imports. In 2006, the volume of Saudi oil deliveries was twice as large.
