Corrections to CY2000 Published Crude Oil Import Statistics

The Waterborne Commerce Statistics Center (WCSC) changed its primary source of foreign waterborne import, export and in-transit data from the Census trade data to the Customs' manifest data beginning with calendar year 2000. WCSC contracted with the Journal of Commerce's Port Import Export Reporting Service (PIERS) to supply the manifest data.

After publishing the CY 2000 statistics, WCSC discovered that PIERS had used an incorrect conversion factor for changing barrels of inbound crude petroleum to tons. WCSC has substituted the Department of Energy's (DOE) published conversion factors for crude oil based on country of origin to correct the PIERS data for crude petroleum imports and inbound in-transits. The corrections were applied to those PIERS records derived from Customs data where weight was not explicitly reported, but converted from barrels to tons. Many of the Customs records had weight recorded, in which case no correction was applied by WCSC.

The correction process resulted in a nationwide decrease of 7.1% in WCSC's published foreign inbound crude oil (from 521.6 million short tons to 484.6 million short tons). Individual ports were affected differently (from 0 to -13 percent).

PIERS acknowledged their error and will use the appropriate DOE conversion factors beginning with the CY 2002 data year. WCSC will correct the PIERS CY 2001 inbound crude oil data for Corps use and for the CY 2001 WCSC publications. Corrected CY 2000 statistics have been updated on this web site. Additional information can be obtained by emailing CEIWR-NDCWCSC.WEBMASTER@usace.army.mil.