The real story is not that China is “back buying everything.” It is that Beijing throttled demand, shifted suppliers, drew inventories, and is now restocking only where landed cost still works — while $1 million-a-day VLCCs make a return to the old full-cycle buying pattern expensive and unlikely.

That is the argument Javier Blas is making in his September 23 Bloomberg Opinion column, China Isn’t Buying More Oil, It’s Buying From Different Markets (also framed as “Don’t Believe the Hype About China’s Oil Buying”). The global market treated China’s pre-war appetite as a floor. In 2026 it became a valve. The Blas thesis: […]

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Russia is pushing more crude onto the water just as Saudi Arabia’s last reliable bypass around the Strait of Hormuz goes dark.

The question in Washington is whether President Trump will treat that extra Russian oil as a problem to sanction—or as barrels he can use to keep gasoline and diesel from becoming a midterm disaster. That is the market story of September 15, 2026. It is also a political story. Prices jumped because Saudi’s safety valve […]

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Saudi Arabia East-West Oil Pipeline Pump Station May Be Hit by Houthis

Open-source satellite imagery and fire-detection data circulating Friday morning have raised the possibility that Yemen’s Houthis struck a pumping station on Saudi Arabia’s East-West crude pipeline, the kingdom’s main overland route around the Strait of Hormuz. The claim is serious. It is also, as of this writing, unconfirmed by Saudi Aramco and the Saudi government. […]

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