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...
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.
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.
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.
Nah. Chinese submarines aren't that quiet so if there were any in the area then the US Navy would have them localized already and there's no sign of that. And Chinese subs lack the persistence to stick around without support for long. The reality is there are zero Chinese subs anywhere near Venezuela.
Regardless of legal issues and whether it would be stupid or not, China still lacks an effective blue water navy capable of projecting sustained power in the Caribbean Sea. They just can't do it in any meaningful way. They're expanding fast and might be able to do it in a few years but not today.
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:
> 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.
> 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.
> China also doesn't have the capabilities to extract the super heavy and poor quality Venezuelan crude
They could build this. That's orthogonal to planting an oil-burning carrier group halfway around the world next to nuclear CVNs that could be reached from U.S. soil by Cessna 172s.
Oh yes, we completely agree. More to the point, the tens of billions of dollars they'd burn–at a minimum–on a pointless proxy war with the U.S. would be better spent continuing to reduce China's reliance on foreign oil.
I specifically meant that it wouldn't be worth it for China to do any kind of large scale oil extraction in Venezuela even if the US let them. Most of the oil in Venezuela is really hard to extract profitably.
Without US expertise and investment the oil in Venezuela will tend to stay in the ground.
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?
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
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.
