I have burned about 1/2 quart of oil in the last 6000 miles of mostly highway driving. I don't know if this is normal or not for this engine/year/miles. I have been doing long drain oil changes for a couple of years now with Mobil1 0w-40 synthetic and am getting great analysis reports. My pattern has been a 1 year oil change interval with a 6 month filter change with top up. Typical miles have been about 5K-6K in a year. I usually don't even check my oil other than to monitor for leaks. But this past year I have done about double the miles in half the time. On a trip to Florida I checked my oil and found it down the 1/2 quart and I know it was full the last time I changed the oil. There are absolutely no oil leaks and I just did a valve seal change about a year and a half ago. There is also no oil in the coolant. I pulled the plugs and posted the pictures below. Nothing on the plugs indicates oil burning that I can see. There is one plug (#6) with a small amount of black on the end but that is just carbon powder that easily brushed off and not any kind of oil burning accumulation. Typically I was doing 3K oil changes and so may not have even detected oil burning and I certainly am not used to having any of my vehicles burning oil.

I guess I am looking for some comment on the 3.0L V6 and its oil burning pattern. Is this a normal condition for these engines? I can't think of where the oil is going other than into the cylinders. The following pictures show the plugs in sets of two so that I could get good light on the tips. Their order is not firing order but just order from front to back and left and right.