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Interesting that I read elsewhere that most Venezuelan oil goes to China due to the sanctions. Would be nice to see them put a carrier group down there to guard

by spjt 9mo ago

Interesting that I read elsewhere that most Venezuelan oil goes to China due to the sanctions. Would be nice to see them put a carrier group down there to guard their shipments...

neom 9mo ago
Deescalation would be preferable to escalation no? Personally I'd prefer this cold war we're living through not kick off into global hot war.
TitaRusell 9mo ago
Whoever replaces Maduro will still be corrupt. Americans think they are fighting the good fight but it will turn out like Iraq: the spice will flow and the Chinese know it. Never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake.
- sylos 9mo ago
  Americans don't think this is any kind of good fight.
JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
> Would be nice to see them put a carrier group down there to guard their shipments... This would be a 4D chess move right off the edge of the game board and into a latrine. China doesn't want to get involved in an oil war. It doesn't want to send its limited blue-water capabilities into America's backyard to get painted. It doesn't want to deal with oil supply chains against America's nuclear-powered fleet. And it doesn't want to risk Trump popping an aneurysm and disabling their ships, an attack to which all retaliation options carry material risks of nuclear escalation (in a way bombing boats on the other side of the world does not), and which would mean trashing China's and the global economy as the trade war turns blockade.
- monerozcash 9mo ago
  China also doesn't have the capabilities to extract the super heavy and poor quality Venezuelan crude, only the US has those capabilities. Essentially all of the existing infrastructure in Venezuela was built by Americans, and is crumbling. While Venezuela has tremendous amounts of oil, most of it is not very easy to extract profitably.
  - lenkite 9mo ago
    > China also doesn't have the capabilities to extract the super heavy and poor quality Venezuelan crude, only the US has those capabilities. Strangely, India does too.
    - monerozcash 9mo ago
      True, but so far at a pretty small scale and with much of the equipment sourced from the US as far as I understand it. I don't think they've been able to get the costs down to profitable levels either, right?
      - lenkite 9mo ago
        Actually, India has one of the worlds largest refineries for extra heavy crude oil processing. The Reliance Jamnagar refinery have a crude capacity ~1.4 million barrels per day (bpd). The Nayara refinery (Russian stakeholder) is rather smaller at 390–400 kbd. There are a few other state owned and private refineries in the South that can process heavy crude cumulatively upto a million bpd. You are right that the equipment was from US (Lummus Technology). However, due to sanctions, the Nayara refinery has begun retrofitting from eastern suppliers. It is sad that both Venezuela and Iran (and now Russia) are all now under West-enforced oil sanctions. Makes life difficult for poor nations that don't have native oil supply. It is not possible to compete with EU for economic oil purchase in the global market
        monerozcash 9mo ago
        Refiners, yes. The problem for Venezuela is the extraction, Venezuelan oil is very hard to get out of the ground.
seanmcdirmid 9mo ago
China doesn’t have the infrastructure or logistics to wage a far from home operation against a similar power country (let alone the USA). They might get there in a decade or two, but right now there isn’t much they can do besides provide material support. Their whole move to EVs is more about national security as it is about environment. Not having to get into wars about oil because you don’t need so much is it’s own freedom.
- riku_iki 9mo ago
  > China doesn’t have the infrastructure or logistics to wage a far from home operation against a similar power country (let alone the USA). they can totally do asymmetrical actions: - deploy submarines which could attack offenders - rather fast develop large quantity of ocean attack drones (even Ukraine could do it with rather limited industrial capabilities)
  - JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
    > deploy submarines which could attack offenders While letting U.S. kit paint the submarines they'll presumably want to use on Taiwan. > fast develop large quantity of ocean attack drones This is plausible. (Still not worth it for Beijing. But doable.)
    - seanmcdirmid 9mo ago
      They could sell on credit submarines, drones, and so on to Venezuela, along with some training. They could even make it into a war by proxy, but asymmetrical by the Chinese themselves? They have too much to lose to do that these days.
  - nradov 9mo ago
    Lol what a joke. It would take a Chinese SSN about a month just to make the transit. By the time they reached the op area it would be almost time to turn around and go home.
    - 9mo ago
xg15 9mo ago
This more so, as the two countries "upgraded" their relations to an "all-weather strategic partnership": https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12-02/us-venezuela-global-and-regional-alliances-amid-tensions/106086318 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12-02/us-venezuela-global-a... https://english.www.gov.cn/news/202505/10/content_WS681e8bd6c6d0868f4e8f269d.html https://english.www.gov.cn/news/202505/10/content_WS681e8bd6... (chinese state media) I guess this will show what "all-weather" is supposed to mean. It doesn't seem to include any military support and at least others are sceptical with respect to the current situations as well: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3335116/china-unlikely-aid-maduro-if-us-acts-could-benefit-fallout-analysts https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3335116/china-unlike...
lurk2 9mo ago
> Interesting that I read elsewhere that most Venezuelan oil goes to China due to the sanctions. It's possible China has built out its infrastructure in the past 5 years and can process this oil now, but in the 2010s the more common practice was for the Venezuelans to sell the oil to a Chinese intermediary that would transport it on a tanker to the Gulf Coast, where the American refineries capable of processing Venezuelan sour crude are located.

by spjt 9mo ago

Interesting that I read elsewhere that most Venezuelan oil goes to China due to the sanctions. Would be nice to see them put a carrier group down there to guard their shipments...

neom 9mo ago

Deescalation would be preferable to escalation no? Personally I'd prefer this cold war we're living through not kick off into global hot war.

TitaRusell 9mo ago

Whoever replaces Maduro will still be corrupt. Americans think they are fighting the good fight but it will turn out like Iraq: the spice will flow and the Chinese know it. Never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake.

sylos 9mo ago
Americans don't think this is any kind of good fight.

JumpCrisscross 9mo ago

> Would be nice to see them put a carrier group down there to guard their shipments... This would be a 4D chess move right off the edge of the game board and into a latrine. China doesn't want to get involved in an oil war. It doesn't want to send its limited blue-water capabilities into America's backyard to get painted. It doesn't want to deal with oil supply chains against America's nuclear-powered fleet. And it doesn't want to risk Trump popping an aneurysm and disabling their ships, an attack to which all retaliation options carry material risks of nuclear escalation (in a way bombing boats on the other side of the world does not), and which would mean trashing China's and the global economy as the trade war turns blockade.

monerozcash 9mo ago
China also doesn't have the capabilities to extract the super heavy and poor quality Venezuelan crude, only the US has those capabilities. Essentially all of the existing infrastructure in Venezuela was built by Americans, and is crumbling. While Venezuela has tremendous amounts of oil, most of it is not very easy to extract profitably.
- lenkite 9mo ago
  > China also doesn't have the capabilities to extract the super heavy and poor quality Venezuelan crude, only the US has those capabilities. Strangely, India does too.
  - monerozcash 9mo ago
    True, but so far at a pretty small scale and with much of the equipment sourced from the US as far as I understand it. I don't think they've been able to get the costs down to profitable levels either, right?
    - lenkite 9mo ago
      Actually, India has one of the worlds largest refineries for extra heavy crude oil processing. The Reliance Jamnagar refinery have a crude capacity ~1.4 million barrels per day (bpd). The Nayara refinery (Russian stakeholder) is rather smaller at 390–400 kbd. There are a few other state owned and private refineries in the South that can process heavy crude cumulatively upto a million bpd. You are right that the equipment was from US (Lummus Technology). However, due to sanctions, the Nayara refinery has begun retrofitting from eastern suppliers. It is sad that both Venezuela and Iran (and now Russia) are all now under West-enforced oil sanctions. Makes life difficult for poor nations that don't have native oil supply. It is not possible to compete with EU for economic oil purchase in the global market
      - monerozcash 9mo ago
        Refiners, yes. The problem for Venezuela is the extraction, Venezuelan oil is very hard to get out of the ground.

seanmcdirmid 9mo ago

China doesn’t have the infrastructure or logistics to wage a far from home operation against a similar power country (let alone the USA). They might get there in a decade or two, but right now there isn’t much they can do besides provide material support. Their whole move to EVs is more about national security as it is about environment. Not having to get into wars about oil because you don’t need so much is it’s own freedom.

riku_iki 9mo ago
> China doesn’t have the infrastructure or logistics to wage a far from home operation against a similar power country (let alone the USA). they can totally do asymmetrical actions: - deploy submarines which could attack offenders - rather fast develop large quantity of ocean attack drones (even Ukraine could do it with rather limited industrial capabilities)
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
  > deploy submarines which could attack offenders While letting U.S. kit paint the submarines they'll presumably want to use on Taiwan. > fast develop large quantity of ocean attack drones This is plausible. (Still not worth it for Beijing. But doable.)
  - seanmcdirmid 9mo ago
    They could sell on credit submarines, drones, and so on to Venezuela, along with some training. They could even make it into a war by proxy, but asymmetrical by the Chinese themselves? They have too much to lose to do that these days.
- nradov 9mo ago
  Lol what a joke. It would take a Chinese SSN about a month just to make the transit. By the time they reached the op area it would be almost time to turn around and go home.
  - 9mo ago

xg15 9mo ago

This more so, as the two countries "upgraded" their relations to an "all-weather strategic partnership": https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12-02/us-venezuela-global-and-regional-alliances-amid-tensions/106086318 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12-02/us-venezuela-global-a... https://english.www.gov.cn/news/202505/10/content_WS681e8bd6c6d0868f4e8f269d.html https://english.www.gov.cn/news/202505/10/content_WS681e8bd6... (chinese state media) I guess this will show what "all-weather" is supposed to mean. It doesn't seem to include any military support and at least others are sceptical with respect to the current situations as well: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3335116/china-unlikely-aid-maduro-if-us-acts-could-benefit-fallout-analysts https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3335116/china-unlike...

lurk2 9mo ago

> Interesting that I read elsewhere that most Venezuelan oil goes to China due to the sanctions. It's possible China has built out its infrastructure in the past 5 years and can process this oil now, but in the 2010s the more common practice was for the Venezuelans to sell the oil to a Chinese intermediary that would transport it on a tanker to the Gulf Coast, where the American refineries capable of processing Venezuelan sour crude are located.