Food & Resource Security

SINGAPORE, Dec 15 (Reuters) - The volume of Venezuelan oil already headed to China before the U.S. seized a Venezuelan tanker last week, plus a glut of crude in storage and weak demand, will limit the near-term impact of the move in the Chinese market, traders and analysts said. Exports from the South American producer

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since the U.S. seized a tanker off Venezuela's coast and imposed new sanctions on shipping firms and vessels doing business with it, with the prospect of further seizures deterring shipments.

China, the world's no. 1 oil importer, is the biggest buyer of Venezuelan crude, though Venezuelan supply accounts for only around 4% of its total crude imports. Venezuelan oil arrivals to China are on track to rise this month and next, traders and analysts say, thanks to a spate of exports over the previous four months, deepening discounts on crude that can take up to 60 days to reach the independent refiners that are its main buyers.

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India's lower demand boosted the supply of cheap Russian crude for China, providing a buffer for the loss of Venezuelan oil at the world's top oil importer after Washington raided the OPEC producer and took over the sale of millions of barrels of Venezuelan oil. China's Urals crude imports reached 405,000 barrels per day so far this month, the highest level since June 2023, data from analytics firm Kpler showed, with total seaborne imports from Russia close to 1.4 million bpd. Vortexa data showed that China's seaborne Russian crude imports surged above 1.5 million bpd in December, up from about 1.2 million bpd in the first eleven months of 2025.

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jli88 said:

China produced 715 million tonnes of grain in 2025. A record.

By my calculation, in case of emergency where heavy meat consumption can be curtailed, China's grain production is good enough for 2.2 billion people.

It's only because of livestock's inefficiency (8 kg of grain required for 1 kg of beef, and 4 kg of grain for 1 kg of pork) that China needs to import grains.

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China’s uneven farming distribution creates significant mismatches between manure nutrients and crop demands, causing pollution in surplus areas and deficits in agricultural heartlands. This study diagnosed the distribution and drivers of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) nutrient mismatches, and developed a Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II) optimization model for interprovincial manure redistribution, which minimizes transport distance and application-phase greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions while respecting ecological thresholds across China. China shows a regional N/P imbalance, with surpluses in the west and deficits in densely populated and grain-producing regions, dominated by a nitrogen gap. Nutrient surpluses are jointly driven by regional socio-economic development, cropping structure, and manure management efficiency.

Strategic redistribution of 0.300 × 106 tons of N and 0.047 × 106 tons of P to recipient provinces reduced land carrying capacity saturation rates (LCCSRs) of surplus regions to safe levels and decreased the national average LCCSRs by 39.3% for N and 24.1% for P. Simultaneously, the increase in GHG emissions was controlled to within 8.5%. This study offers theoretical and practical optimization tools for sustainable manure management under China’s carbon neutrality, advancing nutrient goals and establishing quantitative bases for regional circular agriculture and ecological sustainability.

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China's record natural gas output driven by shale development​