, Columnist
China’s Covid Reopening Won’t Be Enough to Save Oil Markets
That would require an improvement in global growth, as well as a change in Chinese domestic conditions. Neither will happen any time soon.
It’s easy to misread China.
Photographer: Gaby Oraa/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Amid the doom and gloom of a crude oil market that looks like it may end this tumultuous year with prices below where it started, there’s been one glimmer of hope: China.
The country consumes roughly one in six barrels of oil in the world, and for most of this year has been stumbling from lockdown to lockdown as it attempted to uphold Covid Zero. Now that policy has been unceremoniously junked, we’ll surely see an immediate demand surge comparable to what happened when the rest of the world reopened in 2021, sending energy markets into overdrive.