whiterock said:
Sam Lowry said:
ATL Bear said:
One side issue is now that prices are so much higher, Russia is able to sell at a much higher price even after deep discounts. With the recent loosening of restrictions on them, they're likely to fortify their efforts against Ukraine, increase their market share, and end up handing China a strategic advantage in the interim.
Not to mention helping to fortify Iran's efforts against us. 5-D chess FTW.
LOL. You two.....
China has just lost 30% of its oil supply (from Venezuela and Iran) and it has no significant pipelines to Russia, which is losing its shadow fleet to Ukrainian strikes and US Navy interdiction.
The biggest loser of all in what Trump has done the last 60 days is China. He's engineered a catastrophic reordering of their strategic position - to their detriment. Should they decide to invade Taiwan, they now have existential vulnerability to sanctions with few options to overcome them.
China doesn't/didn't get 30% of its supply from Iran and Venezuela. They have about that reliance on Gulf state energy including LNG. But they had already shifted its sources beyond what Venezuela and Iran combined were providing to China. They began making that shift after the original nuclear facility strikes, most of it to Russia but the remainder to Saudi Arabia. They also doubled down on their strategic reserves setting aside nearly 1.4 billion barrels of oil, and have harbored 10s of millions of barrels as further reserves.
Russia already has a pipeline deploying to China with a second one in the works, so I'm not sure where you're getting your facts. China is also wearing out the Kosmino port which is a short ship transit, and just got deliveries via the new Artic route. It's like you think China, a country known for long term planning and strategy didn't counter move or has contingencies. They are not reactionaries like we practice here. Maybe we've clipped some access to black market oil, but Russia is rapidly picking up the slack. With prices headed where they are, both parties are incentivized accordingly.