[JumpCrisscross]

> 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]

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.

[JumpCrisscross]

> 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.

[monerozcash]

It would not be worth it for them, they have much more lucrative options in their own neighborhood.

[JumpCrisscross]

> It would not be worth it for them

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.

[monerozcash]

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.

[lenkite]

> 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]

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]

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]

Refiners, yes. The problem for Venezuela is the extraction, Venezuelan oil is very hard to get out of the ground.