Whenever the commodity cycle reaches a trough, all eyes turn to China. Asia’s biggest powerhouse has through years of explosive growth become the top—or one of the top—importers of many commodities, leading the producers of these commodities to base their own growth strategies on China’s insatiable appetite. Nowhere is this truer than in oil and gas. And now the pandemic has bared the shaky foundation of this dependence. It could hardly be argued that China is an important factor in the oil markets. It is the second-largest consumer of crude oil—most of which it imports—and the second-largest LNG importer in the world. This has turned the country into a natural focus of growth strategies in the oil and gas industry. Every oil demand forecast and every gas demand forecast inevitably has China specifically—and Asia more generally—as the drivers of future growth. The pandemic has not changed this. Asia, and […]