And here is where the problem is, which you keep conveniently ignoring. Oil deals use international market prices as a base line to negotiate new deals, with how oil is right now, China would 100% be getting ripped off.
It didn’t take long for your post to become childish. Clearly you are out of your comfort zone and short handed.
Which “international oil prices”. You keep making up crap you have never had experience with. Have you even traded oil futures before? I have.
So which International oil prices are you talking about? Most prices that you hear in news is West Texas (WTI) or Brent Crude (Russia), but there are MANY prices out there.
Why would Iran use WTI price when Iranian crude is substantially different from WTI? Iranian crude is based on demand from countries that have refineries to process it vs refineries built to process Saudi Oil vs Venezuela oil vs Brent vs WTI.
And how would China “be getting ripped off”? If WTI is trading around $60 right now that is within range since 2017 when it has traded around $50 up to $70.
The brief plummet in oil prices on Q1 and Q2 of 2020 was due to once a century panademic event and oil traders who were heavily shorting oil beyond reason. This caused price to plummet far below actual demand price. Once the dust settled WTI naturally rose back to its range.
Note: I quote WTI for simplicity of argument.
Average price of WTI
2021* | 57.79 |
2020 | 39.16 |
2019 | 56.99 |
2018 | 64.94 |
2017 | 50.88 |
So now using WTI as a barometer for oil prices for arguments sake, China would not be “getting ripped off”. If China wanted 2020 prices well that was due to a global shutdown and heavily shorted oil contracts by equity traders who were taking advantage of the economic situation to make $$$. And China actually would be getting a deal since Iranian crude is at a discount due to sanctions and less demand vs the more demand blends of crude out there on the market.
Again you continue sprouting off your erroneous OPINION without any facts to back you.
Saying that China needs 3B in cash to paid its reserves when it pays that amount to Iran literally every month is hilarious. Now if the arms deal was for 50B or 100B, you could make the argument that China doesn’t want to barter for such a large amount. But 3B? That’s a joke. South Korea has 8B in oil dues owed to Iran from last shipments alone.