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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