Pop Quiz

Quick: What country is the chief supplier of foreign oil to the United States? Hint: the answer is not Mexico.

Early this month, Valero Energy in Texas got the unwelcome news that Mexico would be cutting supplies to one of the company’s Gulf Coast refineries by up to 15 percent. Mexico’s state-owned oil enterprise is one of Valero’s main sources of crude, but oil output from Mexican fields, including the giant Cantarell field, is drying up. Mexican sales of crude oil to the United States have plunged to their lowest level in more than a dozen years.

According to The Washington Post, the number one supplier of foreign oil to the United States is… Canada.

These charts are from a new series in The Washington Post called “Oil Shock” that is worth a read.