Increased oil consumption

[patssle]

No smoke and no drips.

Interesting about the tapping noise. My car does do that sometimes (not consistently) but I've listened to everything and it sounds like it's from the rear of the transmission. Can't really figure out what the cause is though.

Always Mobil1 but I do switch between 15w50 and 0w40 for summer/winter respectively. But been doing that for 40k miles and the previous owner always ran 15w50.