Comment on ‘Nobody—and I Mean Nobody—Saw It Coming’: How China Quietly Took Hold of the Global Oil Market Without Anyone Noticing by Zazu

And that’s a big reason, the Atlantic said, why the global price of oil hasn’t soared past the $100/barrel mark. The Atlantic analysis is full of questions about how exactly China’s need for oil suddenly dropped. “It’s a genuine puzzle,” Erica Downs, a China expert and senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, told the magazine. It’s also possible, the Atlantic analysis says, that China has been stashing oil separately and tapping it more recently. The Wall Street Journal reported this week on how much control China has over its oil consumption and its greater effect on global oil markets.