Support us A 'teapot' refiner in China Photo: Baidu.com Beijing officially welcomed the United States-Iran peace deal announced over the weekend, hoping the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz will ease a months-long oil supply disruption that has rattled China’s fuel markets and battered its refining sector. However, the unofficial response, from the Chinese commentariat, is not so uniformly positive. Chinese commentators do say approvingly that the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz should allow Beijing to replenish its strategic crude reserves and benefit from softening oil prices, with some sanctioned “teapot” refiners potentially finding relief in the diplomatic thaw. However, with Western governments unfreezing Iranian assets and allowing Tehran to legally sell crude, China will lose the discounts it enjoyed by importing Iranian oil through a shadow fleet that bypassed sanctions. “International oil prices will likely fall after the US-Iran reconciliation, which is a double-edged sword for China,” a Sichuan-based columnist using the pseudonym Fanyuzhi says. “In the short term, lower oil prices will reduce logistics costs and ease inflation.
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